Trump’s Ugly New Post-Shooting Rant Instantly Wrecks His “Unity” Pivot

But these accounts often don’t make it clear that in making this charge, only one side—the Democrats—is doing so while remaining broadly faithful to what the facts actually do dictate. Indeed, Democrats are remaining faithful to what Trump and his allies are saying in their own words. Trump has not just vowed to pardon the insurrectionists and treat ongoing prosecutions of himself as a dead letter but also has refused to say he’ll accept the results of the election and has vowed to prosecute his opponents without cause, even as his allies promise to ferociously unleash the state on designated enemies of MAGA.

News accounts should make it clear that it actually is not beyond the pale for Democrats to charge that Trump poses a foundational threat to republican governance. Nor is it beyond the pale to charge that MAGA is the only major faction in American life that valorizes political violence and sees its utilization in service of Trump and his goals as good. After all, this is precisely what it means to vow to pardon the January 6 rioters and to perpetually hail them as patriots and heroes. A media failure to clarify all this will help him pose as a post-shooting unifier.

What’s more, as the Axios story suggests, the idea that Trump is pivoting to “unity” will be very hard for some media figures to resist. Taking note of this temptation, Tim Miller joked: “Can we wait to actually see some evidence before declaring him Mandela now?”