Last weekend, Donald Trump made his triumphant return to Butler, Pennsylvania for a rally at the very location where a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his right ear last July 13.  In September, the former president was the target of another assassination attempt, this time at his Florida golf course.  So the big question is, are there any other would-be assassins out there, gunning for Donald Trump?  The answer is yes.  Besides the Iranians, there is no shortage of homegrown losers who, prodded by hate rhetoric, are looking for an opportunity.

There is another kind of assassination attempt being waged against former president Trump.  It is the ongoing assassination attempt on Trump’s character — i.e., “he’s a Hitler,” “he’s a racist,” “he’s an antisemite,” “he’s a dictator waiting to happen.”

Think of what happened to Donald Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” remark.  It was horrific.  The media took that remark and transformed it into the granddaddy of all defamations. 

To review, President Trump held a press conference on August 15, 2017 and was, as usual, peppered with lots of gotcha questions  —  this time regarding the violent protests that earlier took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Donald Trump expressed his belief that there are “very fine people” on both sides of the issue regarding the tearing down of the Robert E. Lee monument, but the media turned it into a “Trump defends the neo-Nazis” story. 

This political tallest of tales has become the go-to meme of the last two presidential election cycles.  President Biden claimed that it is what made him run for president.  U.S. vice president Kamala Harris continued the charade at the second presidential debate when she said, “Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate.  And what did the president, then at the time say?  There were fine people on each side.”

Judaism has a name for this type of lying rhetoric: hotzaat shem ra (making a bad name).  The creation of a bad name for another to wear, so to speak, is an attempted murder of that person’s good name (or character).  To do it by falsities is a most grievous sin — almost as bad as a murder.  The left does it to Donald Trump all the time.

So the next time the attempts on Donald Trump’s life come up in a conversation, remind whom you are speaking to that the first attempt actually was not on July 13, 2024, in Butler.  The first of numerous assassination attempts on Donald Trump began when he was riding down a “golden escalator” back in June of 2015.

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