This breaks your heart. Or at least it does if you oppose the politics of Donald Trump. For with one image, he may have won the 2024 US presidential election. Photographer Evan Vucci captured it, and has rightly won praise for it, but we should acknowledge that it was Trump who made it. And he made it with presence of mind and courage.
Red blood pools on his ear and stains his face. No wonder some people on social media want to pretend to themselves that the shooting was faked. For the reality, which any rational observer can clearly see, is that in this moment Trump is defying death. He can’t completely know that he’s OK. A bullet has drawn blood from his ear, close to his brain. As he rises from where he initially took cover, with black-clad sunglass-wearing Secret Service agents trying to enfold him, he makes an eloquent gesture of defiance: a clenched fist raised in the air, his arm straight up like a flagpole. His mouth is open in a shout: the words he uttered were “Fight, fight, fight,” words that seem chosen as if they might be his last. Who is he telling to fight? Against what?
