When Donald Trump acknowledged victory in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he looked very much like the man who had escaped an assassination attempt this past summer. I remember seeing the candidate a day or so after the attack in Butler, Pa., and his words were measured, calm and infused with a dignity and gravitas that was foreign to the brash New York real estate titan-turned politician.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Even some of his most fervent critics on the left had to admit that he seemed to have evolved into a different creature, one who had faced his own mortality and emerged on the other side with a certain sort of otherworldly grace.
I also watched him at the Republican National Convention, and he seemed unusually subdued. This was a Trump that few of us had seen before, a man who smiled almost ruefully, perhaps contemplating on the fact that but for a few millimeters, he might not be there. I’ve spoken with other people who have had near-death experiences, and this is not at all uncommon.
And then, he eventually reverted to his native personality, his default position of being both energetic, amusing, insulting, endearing, and appalling at the same time. The reflective Trump of late summer disappeared and became the garden variety Trump you either loved, hated, or shrugged at. But the fact that we had seen that “other” Trump indicated that there was more depth to him than his critics give him credit for, and more sobriety than his fans are prepared to accept. They like his “fight fight fight” attitude and think that he needs to always be in attack mode.
I spoke with a few Trump supporters after the Butler attempt, and they didn’t want him to “go soft.” One even said to me that he thought Trump should accuse Biden of sending out a hit squad. As you can imagine, that person and I are no longer on speaking terms. Conspiracy theorists are not my preferred companions.
But as I was watching Trump on Wednesday morning, straining to keep my eyes and ears open, it occurred to me that the grace he had acquired in those terrifying moments in an open field in Pennsylvania had left their mark. The speech that he gave this week was entirely different from the one that he gave in 2016, and much different from his inaugural speech in January 2017. There was no sense of vengeance, of anger against a so called enemy, of retribution. He was filled with gratitude, and thanked a number of people by name, including his wife (for whom he even did an adorable commercial hawking her best-selling memoir), his children, his campaign staff, a couple of mixed martial arts experts and perhaps most importantly, his vice president.
Trump has been almost dismissive of JD Vance over the course of the campaign, and hasn’t entirely had his back when the Yale Law School grad got into some hot water with Cat Ladies and Ladies Who Eat Cats. But on Wednesday evening, they hugged with genuine affection, and you could see that the torch-while not passed-clearly had its next recipient in pole position.
Watching the once and future president address the crowds convinced me that God had worked a bit of a miracle in Butler. His hand did not redirect the bullet from Trump’s brain to his ear, saving the candidate’s life. It would be disrespectful to Corey Comperatore, a rally attendee who was in fact killed by another bullet that the assassin sprayed into the crowd to assume that this was the case. God would not save one man while making another, innocent man a victim of the same violence.
But in that moment, the country became witness to the gravity of the divisions and hostility that had been festering for years, making Trump a target of unmatched hatred from his personal and political enemies. Two impeachments, four prosecutions, constant media campaigns against him, and a willingness to believe that he was nothing less than a fascist, have been the playbook since 2016.
I’m not saying that the Democrats are responsible for what happened in Butler. But I am saying that the vitriol that percolated for almost a decade against this singular character had its denouement in the attempt on his life.
And perhaps he, and now we, have an opportunity to put aside this reciprocal hatred, and try to coexist. There will still be people who will never accept Donald Trump as their president. But perhaps they can be marginalized, neutralized, and sidelined as we try and reach that point of grace that-for a fleeting moment-was present in the moments after a bullet almost killed the next president of the United States.
