‘Trump shooting reveals how deeply divided we are’, says US political commentator

We were joined by the American author and political commentator Eddie Glaude, who’s a professor at Princeton University.

Jackie Long: What do you think this moment means for America?

Eddie Glaude: For me, it reveals how deeply divided we are. It reveals a kind of moral rot at the heart of our country that we have to address explicitly. That our political differences are being addressed by way of violence or the threat of violence, and it doesn’t portend well as we make our journey towards the conventions and towards November.

Jackie Long: There’s an argument, I’ve heard it being made, that this image of President Trump with his fist in the air can be interpreted in many ways. A sign, ‘I’m okay, we’re okay as America’. But it can also be read in a very different way, can’t it? The mouthing of ‘fight, fight, fight’. What’s your assessment of it?

Eddie Glaude: Well you heard what [Whit] Ayres, the Republican pollster said, that ‘he looked strong, fight, fight, fight’. This is a way in which people are signalling that they have to fight for the country that they believe is theirs that they’re losing. You have to ask yourself the question, he looks strong in what way? A fight for what exactly? What is the nature of the America that they’re fighting for? So once we get beyond the kind of spectacle, the performative nature of Donald Trump, we get to the substance of Maga Republicans, we get the substance of Trumpism. That takes us to Project 2025. It takes us to a version of the country that is very sceptical of people like me and my role and the role of, say, Kamala Harris, the role of difference in the America that we live in in the 21st century. So it’s not about whether or not Biden looks weak or Trump looks strong. It goes to the heart of what is the nature of American democracy in the 21st century.

Jackie Long: In a sense, do you accept the notion being put forward by some people that both sides are to blame for how we got here? There’s a lot said about Trump’s language. President Biden the other day saying it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.

Eddie Glaude: Yeah, now that was a poor choice of words. But let’s think about this. Think about 6 January, think about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Think about the images of President Biden bound and gagged on the back of pickup trucks in the US and Trump retweeting that image. Think about Mike Collins talking about Biden ordered the assassination attempt. We can go down the line and talk about the ways in which political violence has been mobilised, threatened, by Trump. He positions himself as a strongman. But these folks then want to claim themselves as victim when the chickens come home to roost.

Jackie Long: But the difficulty is there are people arguing that the Democrats haven’t put up a strong enough case to defeat this sort of language, to defeat this sort of campaign.

Eddie Glaude: In some ways it’s a catch 22, right. When you try to address directly who these people are, they clutch their pearls. When we try to say that they’re an authoritarian, fascist, neo-fascist threat, that actually challenges the very foundations of American democracy. Then they want to say that language is the direct cause of political violence. When in fact, we know over the last four years, five years, six years, that Donald Trump has been stoking this. So I think we need to be careful not to fall for the political game. They want to position themselves as the ultimate victims here. When in fact, what they’re doing is mobilising grievance and hatred to really assault the very foundations of American democracy.

Jackie Long: We’ve been hearing from voters today responding to what’s happened. Some saying they’re ashamed. But some saying, like President Trump says, we’re going to fight. And it’s difficult to know what they mean by that. But who wins out here, do you think, going forward?

Eddie Glaude: It’s not a matter of winning and losing in terms of a particular person. It’s a matter of winning and losing in terms of American democracy. I know that there are folks now who have to be extra careful, that people have their justifications to accelerate, to deepen, the violence that threatens our political system. We have to keep asking ourselves the question, what are they fighting for? What is the America that they are imagining that they’re fighting for? And when we ask that question, we see the dark clouds that shadow the American polity in this moment.