An assassin can kill a president, but cowardice is what kills a movement. President Donald Trump didn’t give his would-be murderer what the gunman wanted. Trump survived the shots, then he did something profound—he waved back the Secret Service agents shielding him, freeing his bloodied face up from the scrum, and, with a look of defiance, raised his fist and said, “Fight!”

He shouldn’t have done it, according to the rules of presidential security. And the Secret Service were obviously torn between the urgency of covering the former president and getting him to safety, and allowing him to do what he was determined to do. They parted just far enough for Trump to show his face and pump his fist. His life and theirs were at risk.

But the risk had to be taken. The United States can’t be led by a coward or by someone who looks like one under fire. Trump knew in a split second what a leader had to do in that situation. He had to show courage. Morale is a nation’s blood. Trump refused to let the assassin shed it, even as his own wounds bled.

The assassin’s bullets took the life of at least one member of the audience before the murderer himself was put down. Leaders across the political spectrum wasted no time in denouncing the political violence. News of the shooting broke minutes before 6:30 p.m. EDT. At 6:46 p.m., Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose independent bid for the White House this year poses complications for Trump and President Joe Biden alike, called for peace and prayer for Trump. At 7:01 p.m., Bernie Sanders made a similar statement on X, formerly Twitter. Further statements followed from Liz Cheney at 7:18 p.m. and former president George W. Bush at 7:22. 

The exception to this rapid response was President Biden, who put out an anodyne comment at 7:58 p.m. He then gave a press conference in which he declined to say whether this was an attempted assassination. 

“I don’t know enough to—I have an opinion, but I don’t have any facts,” the president stammered. 

No excuse is acceptable here: this was not a leader cautiously awaiting the facts before making a claim. Biden may not have had much information to provide the public, but nothing prevented him from speaking up to express sympathy more than an hour earlier. The president was not in command of the situation. At a time when the country needed reassurance from figures of authority—and when Biden himself must reassure his party that he’s capable of serving as its nominee—the president was conspicuous only by his absence. He might as well have been off reading My Pet Goat.

Caution is in order when such shocking news breaks quickly. But the immediate response from some of the nation’s most biggest news outlets wasn’t cautious; it was unserious. An early Washington Post headline already subject to ridicule on Twitter by 6:33 p.m. declared “Trump taken away after loud noises at rally.” Minutes earlier, a CNN headline had announced, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.” Reason magazine’s Billy Binion tweeted that “using cautious phrasing before all the information is known is good, actually.” Yes, it is, but “loud noises” and “Trump…falls at rally” plumb depths of journalistic malpractice unfathomed even by such earlier CNN and Washington Post absurdities as “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests” and “austere religious scholar.” The “cautious” way to report the story would be to refer to “apparent” or “possible” shots or an assassination attempt. Many phrases could have been appropriate, but not “loud noises” or “falls at rally.”

Critics of the mainstream media argue that it bears responsibility for the attempt on Trump’s life, with the New Republic’s recent cover depicting Trump as Hitler a damning example of extreme media framing that could inspire political violence. The inflammatory rhetoric of Democrats and liberals outside of politics and the media is also being examined in a new light. When Biden says it’s time to put a “bull’s eye” on Trump, what might that mean to a disturbed individual who believes the apocalyptic hype he reads in the Atlantic or the New Republic? But conservatives and other critics of liberal media and the Democrats should not adopt their enemies’ arguments, unless they believe that right-wing media are responsible for murders committed by right-wing extremists. Ordinary people who read the New Republic or watch Fox News don’t go on killing sprees, and it’s stupid to imagine that the kind of person who does shoot at presidential candidates gets his primary motivation from magazine covers or from anyone’s use of “bull’s eye” as a metaphor. 

What all the crackpot rhetoric about Trump as a “fascist” or the “end of democracy” does contribute to is a dangerous misplaced assessment of threats. As of this writing, little is known about Trump’s would-be killer, identified by the New York Post as Thomas Matthew Crooks, but it will come as no surprise if the assassin has links to far left or “Antifa” groups. Quite apart from any involvement they might have in the attempt on Trump’s life, these groups are violent and terroristic in their tactics. Yet the threat these radical leftists pose has been overlooked by a media that also sees itself as fighting “fascism” and sees enemies only on the right. The media and the federal government, especially under Democrats like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden, imagines that the right is teeming with extremists and that left-wing violence is merely defensive—protests and protesters who justly oppose the real right-wing threat but might get a little carried away while doing so. Hence “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”

America, however, has a long history of left-wing bloodshed, which continues to this day in the form of Antifa activism. The man who tried to murder President Trump may yet prove to be a lone gunman. But if he has connections to the self-styled revolutionary or violently “anti-fascist” left, this will be a threat that was long allowed to grow into a deadly danger by Trump’s critics. While crying wolf about Trump, the media and partisan Democrats encouraged complacency about violence against Trump and Trump supporters, like those murdered in Saturday’s attack.

Complacency or outright negligence on the part of the Biden administration continues to put lives in danger from political violence. Democrats contemplated removing Trump’s Secret Service protection after his convictions in New York, and the Biden administration has been stinting in the security it provides to the president’s rivals. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had no Secret Service protection at all on the day Trump was almost killed. Biden’s rhetoric is bad enough, though short of inciting murder. His actions are worse, and may yet cost an opponent his life. Trump lives and is unbowed, but blood has already been spilled as a predictable result of deficient leadership.

This article has been updated with the name of the would-be assassin.