As a nationally recognized presidential historian, Rice University’s Douglas Brinkley plays a crucial role in analyzing significant news events involving current and former presidents. Following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Brinkley provided historical insights and context to several major news outlets and publications.
Appearing live on Fox News, Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities in the Department of History, was asked how the attempt on Trump’s life could impact his legacy.
“This is a big moment in his biography,” Brinkley said. “He got hit in the head, he’s bleeding and he’s putting his arm up and saying ‘fight on’ to people, ‘fight on.’ It’s almost like a boxing film, a kind of indomitable spirit, a will that we’re seeing there on the screen.”
In a Washington Post article, Brinkley said that the images of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the shooting are likely to become iconic. “There’s something in the American spirit that likes seeing fortitude and courage under pressure, and the fact that Trump held his fist up high will become a new symbol,” Brinkley was quoted in the article. “By surviving an attempted assassination, you become a martyr, because you get a groundswell of public sympathy.”
“It is a huge boost for his presidential campaign in a grim and surreal way,” Brinkley said in a New York Times interview.
During a live interview on CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, the anchor cited an uptick in violent political rhetoric, according to the FBI, following the assassination attempt. Brinkley was asked what that says about the state of American politics.
“It’s sad,” he responded. “There is no room for this kind of hate speech. It feeds political violence. Let’s hope people can tamp it down, and Joe Biden and Trump together across the aisle tell people (to) bring the temperatures down. We’re running a hard race, but we’re not running a race to unravel a kind of anarchy across the land.”
In the early morning hours following the incident, Brinkley was interviewed live via phone on CBS 24/7, when he discussed the history of political violence. Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy are the only U.S. presidents ever assassinated. Trump joins a list with Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as presidents wounded during attempts on their lives.
“It profoundly changes a person,” Brinkley said. “In his diary, President Reagan wrote when he woke up from the surgery and looked at the ceiling, he said he was going to give his life to God. It had a profound religious experience for Reagan.”
On what’s next for the country, Brinkley was direct, saying “We all have to unite as a country against political violence.”
With Trump set to accept the Republican nomination for president this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Brinkley indicated the tone and tenor will be interesting to watch. “I think the important thing at a convention is to have fun,” he said during a live interview July 15 on MSNBC, referencing how Lyndon Johnson used humor to lighten the mood at the 1964 RNC, less than a year after JFK's assassination. “Being at a convention like this, they need Trump to break the ice with some humor.”