"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

The hum of anticipated violence grows louder.

As the Secret Service began hustling Donald Trump off the stage after he was grazed by a bullet fired by a would-be assassin, he told them to wait. Turning toward the crowd, Trump raised his fist, and with an expression of rage on his face, mouthed these words: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” You can see it at 1:20 in this video:

It was not enough for Trump to tell his supporters in that moment that his injury was minor or even that he was unbowed; he had give them instruction on what they should do next. But fight against whom, and for what? For now it is considered uncouth to ask. Liberals are told we must tone down our criticisms of Trump, and the news media proclaim the image of him with fist raised “iconic,” begging us to behold him in all his majesty:

One can’t help but be reminded of another time Trump instructed his supporters to “fight.” It was January 6, 2021, when he told the mob he had summoned to Washington, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he sent them to the Capitol, where they attempted a violent overthrow of the US government.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Reporters who have attended Trump rallies over the years have often described a kind of hum coursing through the crowd, a sustained bass note of menace and potential violence waiting to be unleashed. You can feel it when the rally begins, as all Trump rallies now do, with a tribute to the “hostages” of January 6, insurrectionist thugs reimagined as patriotic heroes. You can feel it when Trump tells one of his many luridly violent stories, often about a “beautiful” young woman killed by an immigrant (she’s always beautiful, as though the tragedy of her death is multiplied by the degree of her physical attractiveness). You can feel it when Trump points to the “pen” where journalists are kept, and says “There they are, the worst people in the world,” the cue to the crowd to turn around and jeer. You can feel it in the general mood, which is alternately celebratory and angry, even the joy driven by the feeling that Trump is the man to give those whom his supporters hate just what they deserve. 

The hum is louder now. What we’re hearing from Trump’s movement is anger over the assassination attempt, yes, but also a kind of glee. They already knew what they wanted to do to their enemies, and they already believed they’ll have the means once Trump gets back in the White House. But after this? Just you wait, libs.  

From what we’ve learned so far, the young man who tried to kill Trump sounds like your average school shooter: disturbed, lonely, with ready access to a high-powered weapon. But it doesn’t matter who he was or what his motives were. Trump’s cultists believe what so many Republican politicians are telling them, that “they” tried to kill Trump. Who’s “they”? The “radical left,” the Democrats, the president himself. “We will not tolerate this attack from the left,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA). “This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse,” says Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). “Joe Biden sent the orders,” says Rep. Mike Collins (R-CO). 

So it was that this party whose own rhetoric is positively saturated in violence told liberals that even the most straightforward descriptions of Trump’s explicit intentions to eviscerate democracy and the rule of law are to blame, and must immediately cease. Here is J.D. Vance, aspiring authoritarian, who by the time you read this may have been named as Trump’s running mate:

This is the party whose candidates show their conservative bona fides by airing TV ads in which they shoot pistols and rifles and even gigantic machine guns, showing the faithful that they are willing to kill in the conservative cause. This is the party that makes heroes out of vigilante killers like Kyle Rittenhouse. This is the party that celebrates together when Gov. Greg Abbott pardons a man who texted a friend “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters,” then goes to a BLM protest in Austin and murders a protester. This is the party that cheers a candidate who assaulted a reporter for asking a question about health care legislation. This is the party that thinks it’s hilarious when a man breaks into Nancy Pelosi’s house and nearly kills her husband with a hammer. This is the party whose own elected members have said repeatedly that they fear that if they stand against Trump or even just vote for a bill sponsored by Democrats, their own rank and file might kill them and their families.

And this is the party whose object of worship, the man whom we are now told not to criticize too harshly, tells his supporters over and over again that their own thirst for violence is righteous, justified, and fun. “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya,” he says to the whoops of the crowd. He says “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country” if he loses, and his party responds to the ensuing criticism by creating bidenbloodbath.com. 

The hum was getting louder even before Saturday

If you’re tuned in to the right, you would have noticed the hum getting louder in the last couple of weeks, as movement conservatives who see Trump’s election as increasingly likely began focusing on an imagined epidemic of leftist violence they surely plan to use as the justification for giving in to their own darkest impulses when they retake power. A group of conservatives staged a “war game” about the 2024 election that anticipated leftists taking over migrant detention facilities and Barbra Streisand being kidnapped by Hamas. “As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election,” said a Heritage Foundation official who participated. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.” And if Biden tries to steal the election, who knows what conservatives will have to do in response?

Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, recently said that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Just as Trump’s supporters have always used the real or imagined excesses of the left to justify their own squalid behavior, they now fantasize about the depths they believe they have permission to sink. Last year a poll from PRRI found 33 percent of Republicans agreeing with the statement, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

A speech Roberts just gave at the National Conservatism conference, a far-right confab attended by a parade of Republican senators and other conservative bigwigs (helpfully transcribed by Hamilton Nolan), gives a flavor of their view of things:

The new left we now face is not simply nationalistic in character. It is totalitarian in its mission. It is expansionist, imperialistic, and practically jihadist in its theocratic stance…They want our lives to be worse. They want our freedoms curtailed and contingent on obedience...We simply won’t defeat them by spouting abstract principles or advocating a niche vision of conservatism. We have to fight for the United States of America…if the left succeeds, our republic will cease to be a nation at all, and certainly not with self-government. We’ll be ruled from afar, subjects without rights, subservient to a religion without God, in a land without hope.

Or as an internal strategy document from a group of Christian nationalist megadonors laying out their plan to get Republicans elected (obtained by ProPublica) says, “We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness. ” And you don’t turn the other cheek when you’re fighting Satan. Roberts’ was one of the milder speeches at the conference, which also featured Trump ghoul Stephen Miller shouting “To the Democrat party I say: I have nothing to discuss with you when you are letting criminal migrants rape and murder American citizens!” and J.D. Vance giving a full-on blood-and-soil speech denouncing the idea that America is based on ideals.  

This is a message we hear over and over from the right: The left is so terrifying that we have no choice but to respond with the worst methods we can devise.  Fight! Fight! Fight!

How do you think the assassination attempt will affect both Trump’s personal outlook and that of his supporters? Will it make them more thoughtful, considered, moderate in their tactics, and generous toward those who disagree with them? Or will it make them more angry, more cruel, more vindictive, and more eager to barrel through any obstacle of law or ethics? Will it make them vibrate with even more anticipation at the prospect of the violence their side will use to crush their enemies?

We all know the answer. That hum will not fade. All you need to do is listen.