Trump Names Vance as Running Mate, Rewards Gaslighting Responsibility For Violence

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

On Saturday, June 13, a 20-year-old conservative attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump. “He definitely was conservative,” Max Smith, a former classmate of the shooter, Thomas Crooks subsequently told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

But almost immediately, conservative freshman US Senator JD Vance falsely, ludicrously blamed President Biden for the attack. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance wrote on Twitter. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Two days later, Trump endorsed Vance’s gaslighting by naming Vance his running mate amidst a wave of calls to tone down the rhetoric, as Biden temporarily suspended his campaign.

The “logic” of these bizarrely disjointed facts was routinely normalized by the media, which even floated the ludicrous notion that Trump could somehow emerge as a unifying healer—a thought bubble that Trump himself quickly burst.

Later that night, Trump ranted on his social media site, calling for “the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts” starting with “The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C.” as the pathway to unify the country “and Make America Great Again!”

“Trump isn’t backing off his vow to pardon 1/6ers and says 1/6 was just fine,” the New Republic’s Greg Sargent noted on Bluesky. “This is incompatible with being a ‘uniter.’ It embodies the idea that MAGA is not subject to the law the rest of us are and that invalidating the votes of millions is good.”

CNN initially characterized the shooter “as quiet, with classmates remembering him as a good student and something of a misfit in high school,” with potentially “divergent political leanings,” citing his registration as a Republican and a $15 contribution to a progressive organization—which later turned out to come from a different, 69-year-old Thomas Crooks. One unnamed classmate told CNN “that he had a group of friends who were fairly conservative, some of whom would wear Trump hats.”

But the Inquirer’s account added more specificity:

Smith recalled a mock debate in which their history professor posed government policy questions and asked students to stand on one side of the classroom or the other to signal their support or opposition to a given proposal.

“The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”

While that hardly marks him as an extremist in the usual sense, it’s notable that shooters labeled as rightwing far outnumber leftwing ones. The most recent figures from the Anti-Defamation League show that 76% of political murders from 2014-2023 were by right-wing extremists vs. 4% by left-wing ones — a ratio of 19 to 1. His precise motives may never be known, but whatever they are it’s impossible to blame Biden or Democrats more broadly, as he showed no signs of sympathy towards them.

For perspective on the shooting, Random Lengths sought emailed comments from

University of Wisconsin political scientist Nathan Kalmoe, the author of two books about political violence and related attitudes, With Ballots & Bullets: Partisanship & Violence in the American Civil War, and Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, is Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, co-authored with Dr. Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins.

“Lily Mason and I have fielded dozens of surveys since 2017 asking public views on political violence with roughly 80 questions and counting,” Kalmoe said. “One surprising finding is that we generally see little if any differences in support for violence between Republicans and Democrats, apart from questions where party or ideology are clearly baked in (like January 6th support).”

On the other hand, he said, “We also know from research by others that the prevalence of violent threats and actions is far higher on the Republican and right-wing side,” which means that “something, or more likely several things, are increasing the link between violent attitudes and violent behaviors among Republicans.” Gun ownership levels are one possibility, “but political gun violence has been fairly rare ― though intimidation from armed groups is an important exception,” he noted. “Violent threats, which don’t require possession of any weapons, are also far more prevalent among Republicans — toward elected officials (including Republicans), election administrators, school boards, librarians, and a host of other targets.”

This in turn “could reflect something about Republican politics in particular, or something about the kinds of people who are Republicans — the groups that comprise their base, or personality traits more associated with conservatism,” and he went on to cite two salient factors — gender and race:

One clue is that physical violence is more common among men, and people who make violent threats are more likely to be men. To the extent men are slightly more likely to be Republican, that could be a factor, but it can’t explain why left-wing men are less likely to act.

Another factor is that Democratic men are more likely to be people of color and religious minorities, who tend to face disproportionate retaliation for violent acts, past and present, as individuals and communities. That could be an inhibiting factor on the left to the extent that individuals are sensitive to those dynamics.

In contrast, he noted, “Historically, people from dominant groups have been far more politically violent than people from marginalized groups. That violence was and is often accomplished with the stamp of state authority. Still, non-state violence by militias, mobs, and individuals was more prevalent among dominant racial and religious groups – and certainly by men against women — compared to violence aimed in the other direction.”

None of this says anything about Crooks, but it reflects underlying political realities.

“In short, Republican constituencies may simply feel more entitled to commit violence and make threats than Democratic constituencies,” Kalmoe said.

Further evidence of that came from an unexpected source: the Facebook account of the Trump supporter Corey Comperatore, shot dead by Crooks protecting his family from the gunfire. Comperatore was universally praised for his heroism and personal sacrifice—understandably so. But one can be heroically virtuous in one sense, and not so nice in another, as a June 2022 Facebook post showed: a steamroller atop the motto “TREAD ON THEM.”

Tellingly, Donald Trump never bothered to reach out to Comperatore’s family, but President Biden did. His widow told the New York Post that tried to call, but she declined to speak to him. “My husband was a devout Republican, and he would not have wanted me to talk to him.” Still, she didn’t blame Biden. CNN reported:

“I don’t have any ill-will towards Joe Biden,” she said. “I’m not one of those people that gets involved in politics. I support Trump, that’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill-will towards Biden.”

“He didn’t do anything to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did,” she continued.

So why did a conservative kid try to assassinate Donald Trump? With no obvious clues after the first several days, we may never know.

“Sometimes we never learn the motives of killers and assassins, as in the 2017 Las Vegas mass killing, or the Kennedy assassination. People’s motives for violence can be complicated and sometimes inscrutable,” Kalmoe said. “People naturally assume a political target must mean a political motive, but desire for notoriety, personal grievances, or various kinds of personal crises are alternatives.”

In short, using this assassination attempt to try to prove a larger point, seems to get everything backwards. So far, it can only be understood as part of a much larger picture of violent acts and threats, which in turn has a very long history.

“By far, the biggest threat we face isn’t assassins killing people in politics. It’s the fear and intimidation from violent threats and armed intimidation that’s really hurting us right now.” Kalmoe said. “Those non-physical harms are several orders of magnitude more prevalent than physically violent acts. But, of course, the few violent acts and obscene levels of gun ownership add credibility to those threats.”

Finally, “The present situation is consistent with what we’ve seen historically with political violence,” he said. “For example, many thousands of Black Southerners and their few white allies were murdered – including many assassinations – by white supremacists during Reconstruction and Jim Crow. But vastly more people were frightened away from the polls, even before disenfranchisement became state policy.”

And we’re seeing the same kinds of activities today. Thousands of poll workers and election officials have resigned since the 2020 election. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of voters have been expelled from voting roles. Trump and his allies are already refusing in advance to accept the results of the 2024 election unless Trump is elected — setting up the preconditions for potential widespread violence.

And the false narrative that Biden was somehow responsible for a conservative 20-year-old trying to shoot Donald Trump is now playing a key role in helping Trump to amp up his supporters and make such violence all the more likely in just a few months.

“The discourse is so bad right now, and especially disappointing from Democrats who seem unnaturally gifted at both-side-ing themselves,” Kalmoe said.

“The unity we should be seeking must be grounded in democracy and equality for all Americans, and until Republicans can meet us there, we shouldn’t be united with them,” he warned. “Of course, Democrats are far from perfect on democracy and equality, but a large portion of the Republican Party has embraced what can fairly be described as fascism centered on white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and male dominance. They have to be defeated, not invited to a picnic,” he summed up.

“I was shocked that Biden said political violence is ‘unheard of’ in the United States – that’s just wildly ignorant about our past and our present. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, but I was,” he added as a parting thought.

As long as we live in denial, there is no way we can address the fundamental underlying problem.