Whatever else he may or may not be, whether or not his right ear was grazed by a bullet or bloodied by shrapnel, Donald Trump is a victim of gun violence.
And numerous studies say that as many as 90 percent of gun violence victims subsequently suffer from PTSD. There is reason to believe that Trump might very well be one of them.
“Being that close to losing your life, it changes you mentally,” Aswad Thomas, national director Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, told The Daily Beast.
Thomas is himself a victim, having survived being shot multiple times in 2009 by two would-be robbers, one of whom had lost an eye in a shooting. Thomas suffered what he has come to learn are typical after-effects of near-death by bullet.
“Sleepless nights where you relive that moment over and over again… nightmares…stages of depression…hypervigilance,” he said.
For Trump in particular, Thomas imagines, “being on the debate stage or being at a rally—it is going to constantly be going through his mind.”
Thomas, who had been about to start a career in professional basketball before that dream was violently cut short, added that reliving the trauma is “the experience so many people go through, what I experienced every single day as well.”
Unlike other gun violence victims, Trump will relive the moment every time he sees that ubiquitous video when shots erupted and he grabbed his right ear.
Shonda Lifhred of Charlotte, NC, works with Thomas advocating for gun violence victims. She survived being shot seven times in a domestic violence incident in her home as her young children watched. She said victims first have to get over the shock that has actually happened to them.
“Then the trauma, then the dreams, the nightmares, the sweats,” she said on Wednesday. “It kind of plays games with your mind.”
She went on: “This may change him forever, having a near-death experience like that.”
Lifhred is a Democrat who supports “The Donald” and imagines that Trump was already burdened mentally.
“He has a lot on him running again for president, and what just happened? Someone tried to assassinate him!” she said. “Oh yeah, he’s messed up. He’s definitely gonna need trauma therapy.”
She added, “He may not do it at first, because he would not think that he needed it. I went about maybe eight or nine years before I realized, ‘Oh, wait a minute…”
She only then understood she had PTSD and, even though she had managed to just keep going, she needed help.
“You’re living it every day, but you have to work through it, and you have to do the work, you have to do the therapy,” she said.
Trump was in Charlotte on Wednesday to speak at the indoor Bojangles Arena, which has metal detectors at its entrances for all events in a nation of 393 million guns, where some 120,000 people are shot annually. Lifhred was unable to attend the rally, but as a gun violence survivor, she was sure that the added safety measures did not prevent Trump from experiencing the aftereffects of an attempted assassination.
That may explain why the usually defiant Trump just acquiesced when the Secret Service recommended he no longer do the outdoor rallies he so clearly loved—at least until he became a gun violence victim.
“Something happened to me when I got shot.”
The Daily Beast asked Lifhred what she would say to Trump if she ever happened to run into him.
“I would tell President Trump to do the work. Get trauma counseling. Go through the therapy,” she replied.
She added, “I know he’s older. Sometimes older people don’t like change. But yeah, do the work.”
Meanwhile, in the safety of the indoor rally, Trump joked about the effects of the shooting.
“Something happened to me when I got shot,” Trump told the crowd. “I became nice.”
He then said it is impossible to be nice to people such as Democrats.
“So if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice.”
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