36 Hours After School Shooting in January, Trump Said ‘We Have to Get Over It’

Trump was shot during his rally in Pennslyvania on Saturday. He’s fine but it’s made the already unbearable and Trump-obsessed Republican party even more fucking unbearable and Trump-obsessed.

For example, on Saturday night, Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted a sketch of Trump in a t-shirt with bulging biceps, with the hashtag, “#Unstoppable,” which I guess is the kind of weird shit that happens when you and your son monitor each other’s porn habits. A bunch of Republicans also tweeted about how God clearly spared Trump, including Florida Senator Marcio Rubio, who wrote, “God protected President Trump.”

Hey @marcorubio, are you saying that God did not protect my daughter and the other 16 killed who you represented in Parkland. Wow!!! https://t.co/x3o5ONraQH

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) July 14, 2024

As many on social media keep pointing out, Rubio’s sentiment means that God didn’t protect the Trump rally attendee who was killed, and God also didn’t protect any of the students who’ve died in school shootings over the past decade. But speaking of school shootings…

On January 4, a 17-year-old student at Perry High School in Iowa shot and killed a sixth-grader and wounded seven others, including the school’s principal, before turning the gun on himself. And Trump himself said that it was something that we all just have to get over.

“It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Iowa at the time, according to NBC News. By “at the time,” I mean 36 hours after it happened. “But we have to get over it, we have to move forward,” he added. Interesting advice. I hope Johnson remembers these remarks.

In May, Trump also spoke at the NRA‘s convention in Dallas and declared that the “Second Amendment is under siege.” But it seems very alive and well to me.

Obviously, Saturday’s shooting (or any shooting) won’t change Republicans’ opinions on gun control. (The suspect, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was reportedly a registered Republican but had made a small donation to a Democratic political action committee. Police are still searching for a motive.) But it’s been really disorienting watching the right froth at the mouth over Trump surviving an experience they helped create. I’m not suggesting that if you don’t support gun control, you deserve to get shot. I’m just saying that, if you insist on keeping a backyard full of alligators, and then one day you get bit by an alligator, you can’t then say, “Look how strong I am, I survived getting bit by an alligator.” You don’t look strong, you just look stupid for keeping a backyard full of alligators. Anyways…

The Republican National Convention starts today, so I’m sure the next couple of days will be totally chill and normal. But I felt it was important to take a quick moment to remember Trump’s past remarks since, as Kamala Harris says, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” And what came before Saturday was Trump saying that you really shouldn’t spend more than 36 hours harping on a silly little shooting.