Staten Island is one of the five boroughs of New York City. It is the only borough that consistently votes Republican. Trump is, not surprisingly, popular in Staten Island.

Brian Laline, the editor of The Staten Island Advance, wrote the following editorial:

Hi Neighbor,

There’s talk of investigations, subpoenas and Florida officials charging the suspected gunman with attempted murder in the aftermath of the second assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.

As there should be.

There is something seriously wrong when, in this climate of intense political divide, someone with an AK 47 can hide for 12 hours in the bushes on the perimeter of a golf course owned and used by a combative presidential candidate, without being spotted.

Twelve hours!

This after another madman lurked the perimeter of an outdoor Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, eventually firing an AR-15 at the former president, grazing his ear.


Another quarter-inch and the man would have been dead.

After the latest attempt at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, a sheriff told reporters that “when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they’re pretty much out of sight.”

That, neighbors, is a ridiculous statement. Maybe I watch too many cop shows, but they have these things called “thermal drones,” sheriff. They find people.  Even in shrubbery.

When a mayor or governor visits the Advance offices for an editorial board meeting, a security detail arrives hours earlier and sweeps the building, wanting to know what room the official will be in, how the official will get to that room, which chair the official will be seated, and the names of every person who will be in the room.

But then the sheriff told the real story . . .

“At this level that he [Trump] is at right now, he’s not the sitting president…” 

In other words, the near assassination in Butler didn’t make much of a difference in the level of the protection Donald Trump received.

You can bet that will change. As it should, because the level of divisive rhetoric is only increasing – despite pleas that everyone calm down.

And frankly, as much as this will inflame neighbors who make up Donald Trump’s base, the former president, his VP pick, his campaign people and his supporters are not helping to calm the roiling political waters.

Donald Trump cannot play nice to save his life – literally.

True, he called for unity after the Butler assassination attempt, positing on social media, “it is more important than ever that we stand United.”

That didn’t last long, following up at a rally with this . . .

“They say something happened to me when I got shot . . . I became nice.  When you’re dealing with these people . . .  they’re very dangerous people  . . . you can’t be too nice . . . I’m not going to be nice.”

What “dangerous people” he was referring to was never made clear.

The former president, his VP pick and his cable news mouthpieces blame Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for the latest attempt on his life.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News.

Democrats have “taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust,” he wrote in another social media post.

Dems, for their part, say that Donald J. Trump is a “threat to democracy,” which the Trump camp takes umbrage. I guess constantly ranting that he lost an election because Democrats fixed it, and thousands of supporters taking siege of the Capitol Building to overthrow said election is not a threat to democracy.

To paraphrase Billy Joel, Mr. Trump, Democrats didn’t start this fire.

Who insisted Barack Obama was not born in the United States? Who threatens to jail political foes? Who, to this day, says Democrats “stole” the 2020 election?  Who continually calls Kamala Harris a communist? Comrade Kamala? A radical left Marxist? A woman who will cause a Great Depression?  “She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist.”

Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump and his sidekick Vance ought to get on the same page. They seem to differ on who calls whom a fascist.

“Look, we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another,” Vance told a crowd in Georgia just the other day, “but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist . . .”

We can’t? But your running mate just called Harris . . . oh never mind.

There’s an old saying that Donald Trump just doesn’t get:

Words matter.

Let’s take the absurd claim he made during the recent debate.

“. . . They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” he told millions watching. It has become a national joke. 

Guess what? It’s not funny.

Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, and by extension, everyone in Springfield, have become a target. Bomb threats are constant.  Schools have been evacuated or closed. Hospitals have closed. College campuses have been shut down. Festivals have been cancelled.

All because of threats against Haitians.  All because of absurd claims by Trump and Vance.  And to make it even worse, Vance admits he makes up stories to get attention.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he told CNN.

Political violence has been part of the American experiment since the beginning. Think the American Revolution and Civil War. Lincoln didn’t survive his visit to Ford’s Theatre. JFK lost his life in Dallas.  Bobby Kennedy was killed in L.A. and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King assassinated in Memphis. Presidents Garfield and McKinley were murdered. Ronald Reagan was shot while in office, while Teddy Roosevelt was shot after he left office. Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shot and paralyzed while he campaigned for office. 

There have been many others, the latest being Mr. Trump.

Will these heinous acts ever be eliminated in our country? I think you’ll agree it’s doubtful.

But do we have to make the possibility even worse?

Brian