A Legendary American Photograph
4 min read
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’s Evan Vucci, became immediately legendary. However you feel about the man at its center, it is undeniably one of the great compositions in U.S. 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.
I can’t help but be moved by this remarkable image, taken by a Pulitzer Prize winner who ran toward the danger, camera in hand, rather than away from it. There is a perverse and paradoxical disjunction between Trump the man, who many argue is a threat to American democracy, and this image of Trump, which seems to capture that same democracy in all its pathology, mythos, and, yes, glory. The Compact editor Sohrab Ahmari tweeted that Trump’s instinct—to reflexively gesture in rebellion after being shot at—is “evidence of a truly extraordinary man.” He is more than a little right. Extraordinary, after all, is not so much a moral descriptor as an aesthetic one.
The image of Trump, bloody with a raised fist, is destined to adorn T-shirts, magazine covers, full-page spreads in history books, campaign ads. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the photo is nearly perfect, one captured under extreme duress and that distills the essence of a man in all his contradictions.
Many commentators have already surmised that this image alone will cost our current president his reelection bid. Some rushed to juxtapose pictures of Joe Biden, staring awkwardly and looking frail, with an angry, almost-assassinated Trump. One writer took to X to place the Vucci photo side by side with a still from the film Oppenheimer, implying that the photographer, like the inventor of the atomic bomb, may one day come to feel that his greatest achievement slipped out of his control and ushered in a darker world. The left-wing political commentator Cenk Uygur, summarized things more simply still: “Trump sticking the hand up and saying, ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ while the crowd chanted ‘USA, USA, USA!’ was bad ass.”
All of these reactions, whether fear or resentment or grudging admiration, are understandable. But I wonder whether they miss the point. The real subject of this photograph is not Donald Trump but his supporters. Many of us have mocked Trump stans—their ridiculous fan art that reimagines him with bulging muscles or fighting in the Revolutionary War; their unshakable and cultish belief in his vigor; their desperate desire to see him as he wants to be seen rather than as he is. Yesterday, for a few moments at least, the Trump of MAGA’s imagination and reality became indistinguishable. Not even the most slavish devotee of the former president could have dreamed up a more iconic portrait.
Today, Americans are not unified. We are not “All MAGA,” as a viral headline this morning suggests. We are angry, bitter, and divided; paranoid and afraid; governed by two parties that seem constitutionally incapable of putting America above their own interests. What happened yesterday does nothing to change that. Nor do a few seconds of real bravery absolve Trump of his sins, or make his political platform more palatable. But I would suggest that Democrats and anti-Trumpers take a break from contextualizing and problematizing and hypothesizing and worrying, and instead spend some time contemplating, if only for a minute or two, this photograph. The man, the flag, the blood, the fist.
It is often difficult for Trump critics to inhabit the mind of one of his supporters, to understand Trump’s appeal without immediately defaulting to simplifications like racism and misogyny, explanations that have become less of a skeleton key and more of a shibboleth, particularly as the former president continues to see his support among minorities swell. Vucci has provided us not with an alternative theory of the case but with a badly needed window into the MAGA mindset, allowing all of America, and indeed the world, to see Trump through the eyes of his devotees, people we share this country with.
If Democrats hope to beat Trump and Trumpism, they need to understand the appeal. Which means they need to be able to look at this image and see a promise—one I do not believe Trump can deliver, but a promise nonetheless—of toughness, vitality, and unbowing resolve at a moment when we are wavering, weak, and irresolute before a graying future. The photograph is not a portrait of a man but a through-the-looking-glass vision of America as she would have herself and as many in this country would have her. Our oldest myths briefly became real one bright evening in Butler, Pennsylvania.
