Trump shouldn’t make the mistake of embracing false unity

In the wake of his brush with death in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump appears to be indicating that he is going to pursue a new approach to his campaign, outlined in a convention speech based on unity. This is a mistake.

In an interview on his Boeing 757 plane, the assassination attempt fresh in his mind, Trump spoke with Byron York about his intentions for his Milwaukee remarks and how they’ve changed:

It was obvious that Trump was still processing what had happened. Who wouldn’t be? It is something that will stay with him for the rest of his life. At the moment, he is grappling with the feeling that something very big has changed in his life and in the presidential race. When I asked him, “Does this change your campaign?” he immediately answered, “Yes.”

Trump explained that before Saturday night, he had finished the speech he planned to give later this week at the Republican convention. “I basically had a speech that was an unbelievable rip-roarer,” he said. “It was brutal — really good, really tough. [Last night] I threw it out. I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true. Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty well set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.”

Trump did not mean that a new speech has been fully written, but parts of it have already been drafted, starting in the hours after the assassination attempt. The idea is to reframe the intense conflicts Trump has engaged in during his years in national politics. “I’ve been fighting a group of people that I considered very bad people for a long time, and they’ve been fighting me, and we’ve put up a very good fight,” Trump said. “We had a very tough speech, and I threw it out last night. I said I can’t say these things after what I’ve been through.”

I can understand why this would be the impulse — the man came a millimeter away from dying in a field less than seventy-two hours ago. But in pursuing a “unity” message — something the nation’s media elite always runs to when they fear being blamed when things happen for which they bear responsibility — Trump is about to make several mistakes. First, he’s sacrificing the moral high ground he now occupies. Second, he’s catering to his critics, who have been beating the drum that Trump himself, short skirt style, created the atmosphere that led to his near-death. And third, he’s ignoring the temperature of the nation and voter frustration with everything around them in favor of some limp noodle message in an attempt to get plaudits from the Atlantic and the New York Times.

Trump’s shooting had a devastating effect on the entire narrative advanced by the American left and their allies in the media for nearly a decade: that it is Trump who puts people in harm’s way with dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric, as opposed to a constant drumbeat carried across networks and social media, furthered by nearly every aspect of culture, that Trump’s rise represents the rise of an American fourth Reich. They ignore the reality that two thirds to three quarters of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction and instead blame Trump and his allies for noticing and pointing it out.

The ludicrous post-shooting claims of CBS’s Margaret Brennan, the expressions of fear from MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, and the poisonous spew of the Atlantic’s David Frum all still frame Trump as a would-be dictator who bears a responsibility to tamp down on the temperature of our political discourse. These are disingenuous lies designed to deflect from their own failings and to instill in the minds of readers and viewers that it is till Donald Trump who could in an instant put jackboots in the street. There’s no unity to be had with such a perspective, and Republicans, Trump included, should not pretend otherwise. It’s the media’s responsibility to tone down their own rhetoric, no one else’s. We do not have to accept a false equivalency with a side that puts Trump in a Hitler mustache or has Kathy Griffin holding his bloody head.

Awareness of one’s own mortality should make you more compelled to lean into the truth instead of glossing over our differences. Trump muses to Byron York:

“I’d love to achieve unity if you could achieve unity, if that’s possible,” Trump said. “There are many good people on the other side… But there are also people who are very divided. Some people actually want open borders, and some people don’t want open borders. The question is can those two sides get together? Can sides where you have people who want to see men play in women’s sports and you have a side that doesn’t understand even the concept of allowing that to happen [get together]?”

The answer is: no, they can’t. In a democratic republic, we have elections to resolve these questions — one side wins, one side loses, and we move on. Either borders should be open or they shouldn’t. Either a biological man can race against biological women or they can’t. Either abortions kill a human life or they don’t. These are very real divisions and pretending they aren’t ignores truth for the sake of a bland “can’t we all get along” lie. Trump should not make the mistake of letting his experience cause him to shift away from taking strong stands on the most divisive topics in the country. Not everyone will win, and not everyone will be satisfied, but they will still be Americans who can make their voices heard. That’s how our system of government works, or at least how it should. Under Trump, we saw the degree to which our corrupt institutions are willing to reject the will of voters because they think they know better.

Party donors, corporate leaders, editorial page columnists and people tired of politics find unity to be a virtue — and it can be. But unity is not a higher aim than securing our border, protecting women in sports or defending innocent human life. Donald Trump saying that he has a rip-roaring acceptance speech that he’s throwing out in favor of a message of unity ignores the very reason he’s in a place to give that speech for a third time: that he, more successfully than any other modern politician, has channeled the frustrations of a citizenry abandoned by their leaders and disrespected by the institutions of our country in exchange for the pursuit of plaudits from a ruling class who called for “unity” above the American interest.

It’s OK to be angry. Some fury is righteous. Trump shouldn’t hesitate to channel it. That’s what he’s here to do. He can call for unity if he wins.