1066. Hastings, the south coast of England. The Normans, under Duke William, face the Saxons, under King Harold Godwinson. Repeated charges by the Norman knights, after long volleys from Duke William’s archers, have failed to dislodge the Saxon shield-wall from its position atop the heights of Senlac Hill. Things seem hopeless.
All of a sudden, panic. Word is spreading that Duke William has been knocked from his horse. The Duke is dead! A rout is inevitable, and the Normans begin to retreat, back towards the sea. The Norman claim to the English throne lies muddied, trampled—and dead—in the field.
Then, like a thunderbolt, the Duke appears on his horse, riding in front of his men. He has removed his helmet, so that all can see he is unharmed.
“Here I am. Your leader lives!” he cries.
At once, the Normans rally. The knights turn and cut down their Saxon pursuers. Now it is the Saxons who are on the run.
History is rewritten.
This key moment in the Battle of Hastings, which decided the fate of the Kingdom of England and, ultimately, the fate of the world, is commemorated in the Bayeux Tapestry.
“Hic est Dux Willelmus”—here is Duke William, the panel says, showing the Duke with his helmet tipped back on his head to reveal his face.
Such moments, when victory hangs by the finest of threads, are when true leadership is displayed, when the electrifying power of individual courage and charisma triumphs over adversity and inspires ordinary men to greatness. Such moments are precious and rare, like gold dust, but they are real nonetheless.
I think we witnessed a moment like that yesterday; although it’s too soon to tell what its long-term effects will be.
Wounded by a sniper’s bullet, former president Donald Trump has been surrounded on stage by Secret Service agents. As a tight huddle forms around him, Trump tells the agents—“Wait, wait, wait.”
He raises aloft a fist and mouths, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The crowd erupts. Only then does Trump leave the stage, for safety.
For all Donald Trump knew, those were his last moments on this earth. We saw a man facing death in front of the entire world, bloodied and shaken but unbowed. And we heard his message: a message of defiance. A message of courage.
Never surrender.
The parallels from American history are clear, and clearest of all is the attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. As TR prepared to mount the stage to deliver a stump speech for his Progressive Party, a disgruntled saloonkeeper called John Schrank shot him in the chest at point-blank range. Correctly deducing that, since he was not coughing up blood, the bullet had missed his lung, Roosevelt shrugged off any concerns for his health and continued about his business. His first words to the audience became the stuff of legend.
“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
TR spoke for nearly an hour, delivering the full speech he had prepared, his chest wound pumping blood, before he allowed physicians to look at him.
The Bull Moose, it seems, is still alive and well in American politics, 112 years later.
Since Donald Trump rose to political prominence, it’s been a commonplace of the mainstream media, talking heads, celebrities and your childless liberal aunt, clutching her fourth bucket of wine at Thanksgiving, to call Trump many bad things, not least of all a physical coward. To raise questions about why he never served in Vietnam and compare him unfavourably with figures like John McCain; to cast aspersions about the size of his hands; to liken him to a big orange baby who has no principles whatsoever other than self-gratification.
“Yo, little Donnie dum dum!”
But now the whole world has seen what Trump looks like in the jaws of death.
In the last year, Trump has provided us with two iconic images of power, two symbols of the determination of the American people to resist the destruction of their nation and their dreams—the American Dream—by a social and political elite that has no ties to place, people or history, that values nothing beyond its own enrichment.
First there was the mugshot, taken in Fulton County Jail, Georgia, last August. And now we have the fist pump.
Many questions remain to be answered, not least of all how the whole thing could have happened. That Trump’s Secret Service detail failed about as badly as they could in their single goal of protecting the former president is beyond doubt. We’re already being told that observers warned Secret Service and police, repeatedly, that there was a shooter crawling across the roof. Vital minutes were wasted when the Thomas Matthew Crooks could have been apprehended or killed without even firing a shot.
Was there something more sinister going on? It’s possible. Whether the FBI, an organization that has played a key role in the political and legal persecution of Donald Trump, can get to the bottom of it, I’m not so sure. Don’t bet on it.
But one question, about the quality of the man who wants to be the 47th president of the United States, has been answered once and for all.
Trump is real.
Ride or die.
MAGA 2024.
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