Many were stunned at the horrific scene of former President Donald Trump grabbing his face, shot by a 20-year-old would-be assassin. In a chaotic scene, Trump went to the ground as the Secret Servicecovered him; he rose, pumping his fist in the air with blood dripping from his face, but is safe, perhaps by the difference of an inch. A man attending the rally was killed and two others were injured.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise that it happened,” marketing and tech guru Hillel Fuld said. “They tried legally to bring him down and that didn’t work. Maybe, what was surprising how quickly it escalated.”
Fuld, who has nearly 148,000 Twitter followers, is a global speaker who since Oct. 7 has been spending much of his time posting in defense of Israel, said he thought there was not necessarily any conspiracy regarding the assassination attempt. But he said in recent days, those who fear Trump returning to the White House have become more frustrated as the tide turned in his favor. After a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in May, he’d been slated to be sentenced on July 11 by Judge Juan Merchan. But the judge announced that would not take place as he had to consider the Supreme Court ruling that a president has immunity for official business, as well as presumptive immunity in some cases and no immunity in other cases. Asked about how close Trump came to losing his life, Fuld said it was a razor thin margin.
“I don’t know, people will say it’s God’s ways or give reasons for why things happen,” Fuld said. “You can mark it off as a coincidence or something else. I think one of the direct consequences is it will become a lot less taboo to support Trump. We saw this with Elon Musk and Bill Ackman endorsing him. After the debate, I don’t think there was a question that Trump was going to win, but now it may be a landslide. It will be a direct result of the attempts to bring him down and him coming out of it all stronger. That iconic picture of him raising his fist with the American flag in the background will go down as one of the most iconic in history.”
“People will say it’s God’s ways or give reasons for why things happen. You can mark it off as a coincidence or something else. I think one of the direct consequences is it will become a lot less taboo to support Trump.” – Hillel Fuld
Emily Austin, who has more than 2.2 million Instagram followers, reports on boxing for DAZN and has interviewed numerous NBA stars. She said some athletes are expressing support for Trump. Austin, who has defended Israel on shows like “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” said many are coming to a realization.
“A lot of people don’t like Trump and don’t think he’s a good guy,” Austin said. “But more people are understanding what I’ve been saying. You don’t need to like Trump as a person to vote for him for president. You’re not sleeping with him, you’re not marrying him, and you’re not befriending him. You’re putting him in a job based on his strength and his policies.”
Austin said while the assassin must be blamed for his own actions, the media and university professors likening Trump to Adolf Hitler has been troublesome, resulting in an inflammatory climate.
“The comparisons to Hitler have been done even before this election,” Austin said. “When I was in college at Hofstra(University), my final paper required me to write an essay of why Trump is similar to Hitler. As a Jew, that’s one of the most offensive things I’ve ever heard in my life. My professor constantly compared Trump to Hitler. It’s completely inappropriate to do that.”
Austin said she was not surprised that an assassination attempt took place, but she was surprised that Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to get a direct line from less than 200 yards away. She said the person who told a BBC interviewer that he reported the person with a rifle to authorities was infuriating.
“It seems like it was negligence,” Austin said. “The fact that a spectator saw the shooter and he reported it to the authorities, I don’t know how they wouldn’t stop the person or at least signal to Trump that he should get off the stage.”
While she said she could not get into the head of the shooter and more details would likely emerge in reporting in the coming days, she thinks the minds of many young people have been polluted.
“I think it’s the effect of social media on Gen Z,” Austin said. “Many are brainwashed and unable to think for themselves.
She believes it is unlikely the country will be united in November.
“I think with everything that has happened, there will be a great divide no matter who wins,” she said.
Ami Kozak, a comedian and member of the band Distant Cousins and a political commentator who has debated the likes of Candace Owens and Dave Smith on Israel, also said the environment had become toxic.
“Even there’s been so much vitriol against Trump for so long, there is still an element of shock,” Kozak said. “It struck me as an ‘oh my God’ moment. You might think if you call political opponent ‘Hitler,’ of course something heinous like this will happen. You’re telling them this is the most evil person in the world and that highlights how the political discourse has eroded.”
Kozak, who was at first relieved that Trump survived and was not injured beyond an injury to his ear, said there is danger in misusing language, just as haters of Israel have falsely accused the Jewish State of genocide.
“But then my mind went to incredible panic, that we are this close to the fabric of society falling apart,” Kozak said. “If he was actually killed, what unrest would ensue? It highlights that we should not take civil society for granted, and how close we can be to civil unrest or even civil war.”
Kozak said he was not surprised that within minutes, media outlets were putting political spin on, with a CBS reporter chastising Trump for not calling for calm, despite being in the hospital, where his ear was being tended to.
“Within seconds of it happening it’s becoming memeified with a lot of weird things online,” he said. “You also see online there are different battle lines. With Covid, there was a battle line, with October 7, there was a battle line and with Trump, there is a battle line.”
Kozak, who has nearly 244,000 followers on TikTok and performs comedy and music across the country, said whenever there are flashpoints in history, some will show their true colors and be inflammatory. Others, he said, will be politically correct in the moment, only to later resume the regularly scheduled programming.
“Is it better to have dishonest people say the right things or honest people say the wrong things?” he asked. “It’s an interesting question.”
Rami Matan Even-Esh, a rapper who performs as Kosha Dillz, was in Canada gearing up for a show when he learned of the attempt on Trump’s life. Dillz, who has 153,000 Instagram followers and has visited Israel numerous times to perform and speak with families of hostages since Oct. 7, said we should expect to see many conspiracy theories because it is hard to believe an American president could nearly be assassinated in broad daylight in 2024. He said many will make predictions, but recent events have been unpredictable.
“We’ve seen a lot of things go down that we never thought would happen this past year,” he said. “We hope the country can come together but clearly there are a lot of tensions. We’ve seen some historic twists and turns, and nobody has a crystal ball.”
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