By now most of us have learned of the disturbance in Reno, where Trump was rushed off stage by secret service because some less than observant deplorable in the crowd yelled “GUN!!” in response to a protester raising a “Republicans Against Trump” sign. Other diaries and comments not withstanding, I don’t think Trump reacted particularly strange or cowardly by permitting himself to be ushered from the stage. This is what you do when the secret service tells you it’s time to go.
The real dishonorable act came only minutes afterwards from Trump’s own campaign:
This was retweeted by Trump’s Social Media Director, Dan Scavino, Jr. In other words within minutes of the incident, when information was vague at best and nobody really knew what had happened, the campaign’s first official response was to leverage a (supposed) grievous assault on the country’s democratic process to level a tawdry political attack.
About an hour after this, it became clear that there was no gun, and no assassination attempt. And yet the official word from the Trump campaign remains, per this erroneous tweet, that their candidate heroically survived an assassination attempt.
This level of disingenuous and deliberate misinformation is staggering. But apparently we’ve seen so much of it that it’s become normative and therefore uninteresting for the media to report on. Is it bizarre to be outraged by a campaign trying to capitalize on a non-existent assassination attempt? Could you imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and Hillary’s campaign tried to pull this shit? Would the media be so unimpressed as they apparently are in response to Trump’s casual relationship with reality, or would they be heaping scorn upon incredulity? ← (rhetorical question)