aquascoot wrote on Aug 5
th, 2025 at 7:52pm:
Trump may present as thin skinned to vibe with his audience but I think he has the hide of a rhino.
A thin skinned coward would retire and just go play golf.
Instead Trump put himself in the position where if he lost in 2024. He was likely going to die in prison.
I don't have the guts to do that.
On a toss of the coin result.
Pretty dam gutsy if you ask me.
The left like to call.h captain bonespurs.
But again, if I had 35 lawsuits coming at me, I wouldn't be able to sleep.
Donny is an oaf and uncouth but I don't buy he is some cowardly shmuck.
It was veteran journalist Zito who said in her 2018 book The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics that Trump’s supporters took him seriously but not literally, while his opponents did the opposite.
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The activists of the far left were quick to respond to the assassination attempt. One faction immediately declared that the whole thing was staged so Trump could win sympathy. Another group lamented that the gunman had missed. Unfortunately for them, Thomas Crooks was a figure too shadowy and confused to be portrayed as a Mangione-style heroic martyr.
How, wonders Zito, did American society get to this level of polarisation, so that a significant part of the population would advocate murder as a legitimate tactic against their enemy? There has always been a strong strain of us-versus-them extremism in US politics but the level of hatred directed at Trump is a new phenomenon. Some of it is simple snobbery, the view that Trump is too uncouth to be the leader of the country. Other leftists say that they oppose him on policy grounds but that does not explain the prevalence of Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is also a class element, with Trump supporters seen as uppity hicks. All of these answers are plausible but none seem complete. Maybe that will be revealed with more time and perspective.
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Zito believes that Trump’s rise presages a fundamental realignment in American politics and society, although she adds the caveat that it might be too early to know for sure. She describes a dichotomy between the ‘placed’, who value roots, family and community, and the ‘placeless’, who value their credentials, income, and are essentially nomads. It is an interesting, useful way of looking at the dividing lines.
To the ‘placed’, Trump’s shout of ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ while he was still bleeding was packed with positive meaning. It was not, as some of Trump’s virulent detractors claimed, a call for violent insurrection. Instead, according to Zito, it was a call to his supporters for resilience, courage, and a belief in themselves.
From a review of Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland
Salena Zito
Hachette, pp.256, $50.00
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