Fr. Jason Charron is a Ukrainian Catholic priest. He was telephoned by the Trump campaign team and invited to open Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday evening with prayers, which he did. In particular he offered prayers for the protection of the former US president.
The assassin’s bullet passed within half an inch of Trump’s head, sparing his skull but lacerating his ear.
We should not underestimate the impact of an assassin’s bullet. The beginning of the collapse of Western civilisation in the 20th century can be said to have been sparked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg Empire, in 1914.
The consequences that might have flowed from the murder of Donald Trump are beyond imagination. America would have changed overnight. The impending shadow of civil unrest that hangs over the country could easily have been ignited. If so, it likely would have spilled over to the rest of the world.
For the moment, the political consequences that follow from this attempted assassination are not complex or hard to divine. The prospect of Trump winning the US presidential election this November is now greatly enhanced. But so too is the awareness that violent language transitions into violent acts all too easily.
Catholics are required to practice a rigorous moral hygiene. We are warned in the Gospels not to harbour either lust or violence in the imagination for two reasons in particular: the welcoming of evil into the heart is toxic for the soul; and the toxicity of the soul spills too easily out into the physical realm and, in this case, political actions.
Disastrously, in terms of the optics right now, both Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – who are nominally Catholic – have led the way for the Democratic Party in turning up the rhetorical and ad hominem heat against their opponent.
Other prominent Catholic leaders were swift to issue statements of lament, condolence and, in such fraught circumstances, warning.
Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia offered an exemplary episcopal condolence in a statement posted to Instagram following the attack, late on the night of 13 July, saying that he was “deeply saddened and dismayed to learn of the shooting”.
He said: “Americans must join in solidarity to condemn today’s act of political violence and violence in all forms. Working together, we can resolve our differences through peaceful dialogue and conquer the sin of hatred.”
It was exemplary because it is the sin of hatred that is the fuel for public, political and personal discord, which drives potential and actual violence.
Kevin Roberts, the Catholic president of The Heritage Foundation, went further and reflected on the political ramifications of that hatred. He said the shooting was “no surprise” given years of bitterly heated rhetorical attacks against Trump, adding:
“Today’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump is something many of us have been worried about.”
He joined the political dots as he continued: “When the Radical Left spends years and millions of dollars calling Trump and every conservative ‘threats to democracy’, it’s no surprise that today’s tragedy would happen. We must pray for our country and all our leaders, and for an end to this inflammatory rhetoric of the Left and their media accomplices.”
It is not a partisan political point to observe that the inflammatory rhetoric from the Democrat establishment against Trump has been relentless.
It has moved up several gears from the original (unfounded) assertions of Russian collusion, through the allegation (unproved) of sexual misconduct in hotels, to impeachment, then to allegations of hush money to former porn stars, alongside allegations of incitement to initiate a State coup on the now infamous date of January 6th at the start of 2021 in Washington, D.C.
The pubic accusations have ratcheted up to Trump being “literally a reincarnation of Hitler and planning a dictatorial coup to end of democracy”.
Of the aftermath from that bullet which clipped Trump’s ear, Kate Andrews in the Spectator has observed: “There is going to be a lot of pressure now for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric about Trump as a ‘dictator’ and ‘despot’: (these are) the kind of words people use around the world to justify political uprisings.”
The first casualty of war is truth, and this US election is turning into a war not only between the Republican and Democrats, Right and Left, but also, for many, a war between a residual Christian civilisation and its determined opponent, a ruthless utopian secularism constructing a new world order.
What is referred to as “Truth” has been reconfigured as a politicised weapon, particularly by the progressive Left as a means of demonising their opponents in order to make them morally toxic. Calling Trump supporters “Nazis” appears to have been as successful as it has been acceptable with a generation that knows no history.
The danger with engaging in a process of wilful demonisation is the risk of conjuring up what you have imagined or unloosed. Catholics are only too sensible of the metaphysical implications of playing fast and loose with truth and invoking evil as a means to an end.
Although inevitably both sides of the political spectrum engage in rhetorical attacks, the radical Left have taken it to a more focused and destructive intensity.
Only a few days before the attempt on Trump’s life, Biden had told supporters to “put Trump in a bullseye”. A clumsy and unpleasant piece of rhetoric that now sounds and looks even worse given what has happened.
On top of that, Biden has said in relation to Trump on several occasions that he’d “like to take him behind the gym” and, by implication, beat him up.
In a speech in 2022 he insisted that “Donald Trump represents an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic…we have to protect it.”
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi labelled the political machinery around Trump as “domestic enemies”; Hillary Clinton dismissed the Trump-endorsing section of US society as “deplorables”. The pop star Madonna imagined blowing up the White House. Kathy Griffin, a low-level comedian, had herself photographed holding a mock-up of Trump’s severed head.
In this country, the Times journalist David Aaronovitch published a tweet not long ago that read “If I was Biden I would hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security”. He subsequently deleted it, while explaining that is was clearly a satirical joke that many had misconstrued and that, as a result of their misconstruing, he himself had found himself a “victim”, which is of course the Left’s perpetual get-out-of-moral-jail-free card.
All this represents one of the most pernicious aspects of current political discourse, which is the demonisation of the opponent. Of course it is necessary to recognise that both, indeed all, sides of the political arena practice this to some extent or other. But it is also a fact that the progressive Left has been characterised by the use of the technique of character assassination as part of their strategy of cancellation.
The attempted assassination – the logical and physical end state of a cancelation of President Trump – has created waves of shock and horror, but not of incomprehension. The assassination of the human character is only a short distance away from the assassination of the human person.
In addition to the potential political consequences, the terrifying events at the Trump rally may have other consequences that we did not expect.
The first is that there may be – there certainly ought to be – a renewed pressure for testing ideas to destruction rather than the people who hold them.
And the second may flow from the emerging news that President Trump believes that his life was saved by an act of God, and that the prayers of Fr Jason Charron were not unconnected with what looks to many people little short of a miracle.
Should Donald Trump be re-elected to the US Presidency come November, it would be no bad thing for the world to find itself dealing with a US president who believed he owed his life to an act of God, and was grateful.
