DON SURBER: You know, for a guy shot in the face, Trump is having a good week. He made $763 million on Monday

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THOMAS CROOKS:

Had Saturday’s assassination attempt been carried out against President Joe Biden, we have no doubt we would have read about how the right’s dangerous rhetoric was behind it. We are old enough to remember more than a decade back when former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs imagery to identify congressional districts—or, as the Atlantic’s James Fallows put it, “extreme, implicitly violent political rhetoric and imagery”—was fingered as an incitement for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s (D., Ariz.) shooter. (He was, in fact, a deranged individual with no discernible motivation, political or otherwise.)

We could go on: The media fatuously attributed a Georgia spa shooting in 2021 to right-wing, anti-Asian hatred while the motivations of the left-wing lunatic who almost took out Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.) and other Republican lawmakers on a baseball field in 2017 went studiously unexamined.

Plenty of poisonous rhetoric has been flying around on the left for the past decade. Biden is waging a campaign whose only argument, expressed with intermittent coherency, is that democracy is on the ballot. “We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s eye,” Biden told donors last week. Even in the 2022 midterms he was scaremongering in front of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, telling voters that the race was about “democracy itself” and a Republican victory would “allow dark forces to thirst,” whatever that means. The New Republic and others compare former president Donald Trump to Hitler.

We don’t know whether those moronic and misguided talking points led Thomas Crooks to try to assassinate Trump, but there are a few things we do know.

More than a few.

THEY’RE ALWAYS HORRIFIED BY FREEDOM: Lefties Horrified Young White Men Can Buy 50 Rounds of Ammo Without Triggering a SWAT Raid.

JOHN LUCAS: Leadership Under Fire.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE VANCE PICK: “I’m happy with this choice. Aren’t you?”

“I’m glancing around elsewhere and keep seeing this theme: Vance used to criticize Trump. The old criticisms are repeated. But we’ve all heard criticisms of Trump, and here’s someone who knew and felt the criticisms, but he came around. And he’s going to be telling us, eloquently, how he came around.”

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DAVID FOSTER: Of Leadership And Courage.

UPDATE: A friend writes: “Trump’s reaction reminds me of what Shelby Foote said about Grant:”

“Grant the general had many qualities but he had a thing that’s very necessary for a great general. He had what they call ‘four o’clock in the morning courage.’ You could wake him up at four o’clock in the morning and tell him they had just turned his right flank and he would be as cool as a cucumber.”

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA: The Dangers of Orbital Debris.

I ALREADY SUPPORT HIM, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SELL ME.

NO ONE BELIEVES OUR SUFFERING: ‘Man Flu’ Could Actually Have a Real Explanation, Expert Says. “There are differences in immune responses between men and women that provide a plausible reason for worse symptoms in men.”

AND BY “INTERACTED,” HE MEANS “GOT IT ON:” Geneticist Joshua Akey states that modern humans and Neanderthals interacted for a period of 200,000 years.

HEH:

“A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.” — Donald Trump

Whether you love him, hate him, or have wearily resigned yourself to him, you gotta admit he’s funny.

Did I say heh? Yes, yes I did.

WELL, GOOD: Study: Scientists identify cause of lupus, way to reverse it.

LESSONS LEARNED: First of all, the Secret Service is utterly incompetent.

TRUMP’S BIG MO:

Everything really is going Donald Trump’s way in the six weeks since his conviction on May 30. Trump pulled in a vast fundraising haul after the conviction, jumping ahead for the first time in the campaign cash race while his conviction barely dented his standing in the polls. The intermediate appeals court in Georgia issued a stay order halting Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump. The Supreme Court took two big bites out of Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump in D.C., with an immunity ruling and a decision on the obstruction-of-a-proceeding statute that will both require further, time-consuming litigation to see how they have narrowed the case. Acting Justice Juan Merchan delayed Trump’s state-court sentencing in New York from mid July to mid September in order to consider whether Trump’s conviction violated his immunity from having evidence of official acts introduced at his trial. His opponent melted down so badly in their first debate that Joe Biden is still fending off calls to drop out of the race, and has reportedly seen his fundraising dry to a trickle with big donors. Then, Trump survived an assassination attempt and emerged looking vigorous and defiant. He will probably raise another mountain of cash after the shooting in Butler, Pa., which left a flustered Biden scrambling to pause his attack ads and reconsider the vitriol of his attacks on Trump. MSNBC even sidelined Morning Joe for the day out of fear of going overboard against Trump. And now, rolling into today’s curtain-opening of the Republican convention and announcement of Trump’s running mate, Judge Aileen Cannon has thrown out what once seemed the strongest of the cases against the former president: the retention of boxes of classified and sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.

Now add the Vance selection and Trump is looking dynamic. But wait, there’s more.

Earlier today, Trump called for RFK to get Secret Service protection, and a friend messaged me: “Haha, when they do that, our crazy orange former president official becomes shadow chief executive. Making the common sense calls the Biden admin can’t quite manage.”

And later today, they did that, with Sec. Mayorkas announcing that RFK will get Secret Service protection. To which my friend comments: “Prediction: Here through Jan 20  will be the first six months of the second Trump admin.”

The dynamism is all on one side here.

SO, J.D. VANCE. I had told Helen that I thought the assassination attempt would boost his chances. With Trump feeling — literally — the wind of mortality on his neck, he’s going to want a backup who’ll carry the MAGA flame, not some milquetoast who might “balance the ticket” but who wouldn’t be worth it if he/she stepped into Trump’s shoes. Plus at best Trump can only serve one term; he wants someone who might follow him in office and carry the MAGA vision forward.

I’m skeptical that VP candidates make that big a difference, but I think it means something that Vance will add non-geriatric balance to the ballot this time around.

I should say that I’ve known Vance for a while, to a small degree. Back when he was a literary celebrity, not a political one, he passed through Knoxville a couple of times and we had drinks and lunch, once with his family. I quite like him and think he’s sincerely motivated to make things better. I’ve only heard from him a couple of times since he became a Senator, but to his credit neither involved him asking me for money, which is an accomplishment for a Senator . . .

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Carry Laws Don’t Increase Gun Theft or Gun Crimes.

BRIAN WANG: Tesla FSD Profits Will Explode. “This is hugely significant because each full purchase of FSD is the profit of a car. You buy a Model Y for $40,000 and Tesla gets $8000 of profit. Tesla sells FSD for about $8000 and that is the profit of a car.”

NIALL FERGUSON: A Shot at the President—And the Turn of History: Assassinations have often changed the course of a country. Would that have happened if the shooter had slightly better aim?

HMM: Weight-loss jabs linked to lower cancer risk compared with insulin—new study. There seem to be a lot of positive studies coming out lately about these drugs.

HMM: Sleep apnea particularly dangerous for heart health in young adults.

CHRIS RUFO: A Compromised Secret Service.

Related: Former US Army sniper reacts to Trump assassination attempt: This was ‘massive negligence.’

COMMON SENSE:

BREAKING: Donald Trump calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr to receive Secret Service pic.twitter.com/vRvxTzghvX

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 15, 2024

UPDATE: A friend sends: “Haha, when they do that, our crazy orange former president official becomes shadow chief executive. Making the common sense calls the Biden admin can’t quite manage.”

MICHAEL WALSH: Trump, Biden, and the Shame of the Corporate Media.