The other shooters

The other men – and women – who “shot” Donald Trump on Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally after an assassination attempt gave America and the rest of the world pivotal records of history amid our fast spinning and turning world.

Three images stood out immediately soon after the shooting and, according to news website Axios, these are now dubbed in newsrooms everywhere as the “Evan photo” by the Associated Press’ Evan Vucci; the “Anna photo” by Getty Images’ Anna Moneymaker and the “bullet photo” by the New York Times’ Doug Mills.

Evan Vucci’s photo shows a bloodied and defiant Trump raising his fist with the American flag in the background while Doug Mills’ photo showed a speeding bullet very close to Trump’s head.

Anna Moneymaker managed to capture an extraordinary image of Trump on the floor of the stage after the shooting which, as described by the Associated Press, was “taken peephole-style through the legs of a Secret Service agent shielding him.”

Of the three, I like Anna’s photo the most because it was a quiet, intimate and raw capture of a man caught in a very chaotic moment in his life.

I dare say photographers are perhaps as highly skilled as assassins themselves.

While their purpose and their weapon are entirely different, both the assassin and the photographer have just one pivotal chance to seize a moment which, in split seconds, is gone forever. Either they succeed or they don’t.

Of the three images though, it is perhaps Evan’s photograph that has become the most popular and widely shared, especially by Trump’s allies and devotees.

After all, throughout history, photographs and paintings with flags and bloodied men have always been a compelling visual record of critical moments in time – whether it’s the French Revolution or the American War.

An article by The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper summed it perfectly. Writing about Evan Vucci’s photo, Harper said:

“Donald Trump raises a fist. Blood streaks his face. The sky is high, blue and empty except for an American flag caught in a hard wind. A Secret Service agent has her arms around his waist. The former president’s mouth is open, in the middle of a snarled shout. We know from video footage that he is yelling ‘Fight!,’ that the crowd is chanting ‘USA!’

“The photograph, by the Associated Press’ Evan Vucci, became immediately legendary. However you feel about the man at its center, it is undeniably one of the great compositions in US photographic history. Although I am deeply relieved that Trump survived this assassination attempt, I am no fan of his.

“But the first time I saw the photo, I felt an emotion that I later recognized, with considerable discomfort, as a fluttering of unbidden nationalist zeal. What encapsulates our American ideal more than bloody defiance and stubborn pride that teeters just on the edge of foolishness? No hunkering and no hiding – standing undaunted and undeterred, fist-pumping your way through an attempted murder.

“It was a moment when Trump supporters’ idea of him – strong, resilient, proud – collided with reality.”

For me, the images, at the very least, show the importance of having experienced and professional photojournalists to record history.

But more than a homage to the photographers who captured that extraordinary moment in history, I write this as an attempt to disentangle Trump, the man and his devotees’ idea of him.

As Harper said, at least at that moment, Trump supporters’ image of him had collided with reality.

I write this though without prejudice to the assassination plot itself or whatever it was; authorities must get to the bottom of it.

I write this, too, without prejudice to the still rampant use of guns in America.

The US has surpassed 39,000 deaths from gun violence every year since 2014, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive as reported by abcnews.

Still, gun deaths are down from 2016, 2017 and 2018, when the total number of deaths each year surpassed 50,000. There were 44,310 such deaths in 2022, the report said.

Most of all, I write this to show what the images really tell – and the extent by which they were shared especially by Trump’s allies and supporters.

‘Strongmen’

The images are reflections of the strange and still untarnished appeal of “strongmen” leaders, especially in America and especially after President Biden’s performance during their debate.

From Putin to Xi Jinping to Rodrigo Duterte and yes, Trump, the world has tilted toward such leaders, forgetting the high hopes that freedom-loving nations had for a new kind of leadership and liberal democracies after the historic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

It was true in the early 2000s and still true now.

At best, the images have given Trump’s critics the lens by which his devotees see him.

Americans – perhaps like the rest of the world – bank on a leader’s toughness and defiance to steer their ship in the face of an uncertain future.

They see that promise of MAGA – Make America Great Again – in that bloodied image of Trump raising his fist amid the chaos.

Trump, being Trump of course, had that uncanny instinct to consider how he looked even in the face of gunfire.

What happens next, however, is still anyone’s guess and whether or not Trump will deliver on his promise to “make America great again” remains to be seen.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.