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When I led raids as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, I used to move around the objective with my hands in my pockets. I did this to show the Marines that I wasn’t afraid—even if I was. Acting calm in a firefight wasn’t always easy, but it’s what a combat leader does. Whatever you think of Trump, he proved himself to be a combat leader on Saturday. A bullet came an inch from blowing his brains out. He took cover. And when he stood, with blood splattered across the side of his face, he had the presence of mind to pump his fist in the air and shout, “Fight!” and “USA!” to his supporters, just when they were looking to him for leadership.
The attack fundamentally reshapes the presidential race. Trump’s detractors understand this intuitively. It’s why outlets like MSNBC immediately picked up on a rumor that Trump’s wound came from glass from his teleprompter, not a bullet. A brush with a teleprompter doesn’t possess the same valence as a brush with a bullet—these stories vanished once The New York Times published an extraordinary photograph of the bullet whizzing by Trump’s head.
When a bullet whizzes by your head, a binary choice is immediately presented to you: fight or flight. Trump chose the former. A pair of photos have emerged from yesterday. The first is a close-up of Trump, on the ground, appearing stunned, a trickle of blood coursing down his face. The second is taken a moment later. Trump is standing, his fist defiantly in the air.
The way I “fought” was to stay cool, to show my Marines that no matter how hot a firefight became that we were in control. Trump’s style is a bit more on the nose. The way he “fights” is by literally raising his fist and shouting the word to a crowd. But every part of his response was deliberate. It’s why he was insisting on keeping his shoes on. He wasn’t going to be led from the stage in front of millions of Americans in his stocking feet.
The assassination attempt has also given Trump a new moral authority. What he does with it matters a great deal, both for his election chances and the country. The true leader, the one worth voting for, will figure out how to bring the country together in this crisis, even amid an ongoing election.
Elliot Ackerman is a former Marine. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Valor, and a Purple Heart during his five deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Semper Fi. Thank you for your service. We should also recognize Evan Vucci, the photographer who captured this iconic moment. He ran towards the president when his own life was in danger. May we all have the same courage under fire as you, Evan, and Trump.
The ironies are hard to ignore. Dems have spent 8 years telling us Trump is a danger to democracy. Yet it is they with their unhinged rhetoric (Trump is the new Hitler), imagery (Griffin promoting a picture of Trump's severed bloody head), and call to arms (Maxine Waters calling on people to actively harass Trump supporters and judicial nominees) who are the greatest threat to democracy. Dems have told us Trump is less to be trusted with the country's safety than Biden. Yet, it's Biden whose policies (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel) pose a greater threat to American security than Trump. In fact, the Abraham accords, major steps towards peace in the Middle East, were facilitated by the Trump administration. It's the Dems who assert Trump wants to undermine the Constitution, yet they are the ones who threaten to pack the Supreme Court and revoke executive authority granted to the president if that president is Trump. And here's the worst part from the stand point of civility---it's the Dems who claim to care about violence in America. Yet the major instances of political violence in the past 50 years have almost without exception been perpetrated by left leaning entities, as in this case. And as in this case, they were stoked by unhinged left leaning politicians or media pundits. It's time America woke up and recognized who is most responsible for the incivility and income gap in America...the very people who claim to be the good guys.