Blades, Bullets, and the Trump Doctrine: Why Republicans Bleed for America

From the guillotines of Revolutionary France to the assassination of Lincoln, the shooting of Reagan, and the near-death of Trump, history shows that Republicans have paid the highest price for keeping America free. Murder rates drop when strong leadership enforces law and order, and if we want this nation to survive the next storm — at home or abroad — we need leaders with the backbone to do what must be done, no apologies given.

By: Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF, CLU, ChFC, RFC

September 11, 2025

Authors Note:

This piece was written five days before the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah and was scheduled to go live on my website on September 11, 2025 — a date I chose intentionally because of its historical weight, not because of what would tragically happen just yesterday. This is not opportunistic writing. The timing is what it is, and frankly, it underscores the point I’ve been making for years: political violence in this nation is no longer a theory — it’s reality.

Yesterday, I was having an “early business dinner, late business lunch” when my phone lit up with a rapid-fire series of notifications. I knew immediately something bad was happening. You see, I have a system of alerts that is highly structured — it covers investment data, wealth and economic events, war, terrorism, and political developments, including deaths and assassinations. The system allows me to engage with others, conduct business, and have a somewhat normal life. Okay, somewhat might be an exaggeration. 

The assassination of Charlie Kirk triggered the system.

I calmly cut my external engagement short, returned to my office, and got to work while driving and immediately upon arrival. Those with me saw my reaction — measured, steady, deliberate. You should know, that when I am loud, that’s no big deal. But when I get quiet and methodical, I’m in the zone. And so, while at the restaurant, I pulled out a legal pad, started writing, making notes, asking the six questions I always ask: who, what, where, when, why, how, and which. Calls and texts flew. At one point, I told someone, “I just completed that piece on this very subject…” and my thoughts went immediately to President Trump, to the attempts on his life, to Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Reagan — and the pattern that Republicans keep bleeding for this country while Democrats keep screaming that we’re the problem. And then I got somewhat sick to my stomach with, who else, what if, and we’re coming up on September 11th.

So much ran through my mind in the afternoon and evening hours of yesterday. So many notes filled so many pages. And one thought kept repeating itself

This assassination just moved the needle. Substantially. And it will continue to do so. 

That is why I am publishing the following exactly as it was written — not to seize a moment, but to demonstrate what connecting the dots really looks like. I didn’t have a crystal ball when I wrote this. I didn’t need one. I simply watched the trends, connected the data points, and refused to lie to myself about where this country is heading.

This is not just commentary. This is a warning. Political assassination has returned to the forefront of American life. And unless this country gets serious about law, order, and leadership, what happened to Charlie Kirk will not be the last.

Part 1: America vs. the Guillotine Crowd

When people talk about the death penalty in America, you’d think we’re running guillotines on every street corner. You’d think the United States is this bloodthirsty nation, obsessed with killing people. But here’s the truth — and I’ll say it the way it needs to be said — America has never, ever been in the same league as the so-called “civilized nations” that turned execution into a conveyor belt.

Take France. Everyone loves to romanticize the French Revolution — liberty, equality, fraternity. What they don’t like to talk about is the Reign of Terror. Between 1793 and 1794, about 17,000 people were officially executed by guillotine. Thousands more died in prison, or in kangaroo trials, or were simply butchered without process. Think about that: in just two years, France killed more of its own citizens than America has executed in the past two centuries combined.

And here’s the kicker: France didn’t retire the guillotine until 1977. Nineteen seventy-seven. Jimmy Carter was president, disco was at its peak, Elvis had just died — and France was still dropping blades on people’s necks in the town square. The death penalty wasn’t abolished there until 1981. For nearly two hundred years, the guillotine was the “humane” method of execution. Humane? Tell that to the thousands who were marched up the wooden stairs and given a split-second of dignity before their heads hit the basket.

Now compare that with the United States. Yes, we’ve had executions. Hanging was the standard for most of our history, followed later by electrocution, gas, and lethal injection. But let’s be honest: our numbers are small. Since the founding of this country, we’ve executed somewhere in the range of 15,000 people total. That’s across nearly 250 years. Do the math — that’s an average of about 60 per year, and most years were far fewer than that.

Fast forward to modern times. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, we’ve executed just over 1,600 people nationwide. That’s 1,600 across almost fifty years. Today, we average about 20 to 25 executions a year, in a country of more than 330 million people. Most years, the number is so low that you could fit all the executed inmates into a medium-sized courtroom.

So don’t lecture me about how America is “bloodthirsty.” Don’t trot out the talking points about how Republicans are obsessed with the death penalty. Our system is the exact opposite of bloodthirsty. It’s cautious, deliberate, and painfully slow. Criminals spend decades on appeals. Families of victims wait years for closure that often never comes. If anything, America has bent so far backward in favor of due process that it’s a miracle any executions happen at all.

And that’s the point. We are not France with the guillotine. We are not some dictatorship mowing down citizens in mass graves. We are a nation that, whether you like it or not, still believes in trials, juries, appeals, and a process that gives even the guilty a fighting chance. That is not brutality. That is restraint. That is civilization.

So the next time someone tries to paint the United States as barbaric because we still have capital punishment, remind them of the facts. Remind them that France — the country of baguettes and wine — kept the guillotine until 1977. Remind them that our total executions in two and a half centuries don’t even equal the number killed in Paris in a single year of revolutionary madness.

The real story isn’t that America is too harsh. The real story is that America is one of the few nations that still has the guts to say some crimes are so horrific, some acts are so vile, that the ultimate penalty is still on the table. That’s not brutality — that’s justice. And compared to the rest of the world, our record proves we’ve shown more mercy than we’re ever given credit for.

Part 2: Democide on a Global Scale

If you thought France was bad with its guillotines, buckle up. Because when you start looking at the twentieth century, you realize what real brutality looks like. I’m talking about governments that didn’t just execute a handful of murderers after years of trials and appeals. I’m talking about regimes that murdered their own citizens by the tens of millions — deliberately, systematically, and without blinking.

Start with Russia. Stalin didn’t just run a police state. He turned the entire Soviet Union into a slaughterhouse. The gulags, the purges, the engineered famines — the numbers are almost too big to process. Scholars argue about the totals, but the serious estimates land around 20 to 60 million deaths under Soviet rule. Think about that: tens of millions of people executed, starved, or worked to death by their own government. That’s not criminal justice. That’s state-sponsored mass murder.

Now move to China under Mao Zedong. The so-called “Great Leap Forward” was nothing more than a leap into a pit. Policies designed by the Party starved at least 30 to 45 million people to death. Add the Cultural Revolution, political purges, and state executions, and the death toll in China under communism easily surpasses 65 million. And yet, in certain corners of academia and media, Mao is still treated like some kind of visionary leader. No — he was a butcher, plain and simple.

Cambodia? The Khmer Rouge decided that anyone with an education, anyone who wore glasses, anyone who looked like they could think independently had to go. Between 1975 and 1979, they wiped out about two million people — a quarter of the entire population. They called it “Year Zero.” I call it pure evil.

Uganda under Idi Amin? Roughly 300,000 people murdered in just eight years. Tribal killings, disappearances, torture chambers — Amin turned the country into a nightmare and then strutted around like he was untouchable.

Angola during its civil war? Hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced, and warlords treated civilians as cannon fodder. Even after the guns went quiet, justice was nowhere to be found. It was just written off as another African tragedy.

Now, pause and compare. The United States gets lectured daily for being “too harsh,” for still having the death penalty, for executing maybe 20 criminals a year after decades of due process. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Cambodia, Uganda, Angola — these regimes didn’t bother with courts, juries, or appeals. They murdered millions as a matter of policy. That’s the difference.

And here’s the sick irony. The same people who call America brutal because we execute a serial killer after 25 years of appeals are often the same ones who go soft on communist dictators. They shrug at Mao. They excuse Stalin. They downplay Pol Pot. They act like Amin was just a “colorful character.” That’s not just ignorance — that’s willful blindness.

So let me say it plain. America is not the villain. We are not in the same category as these monsters. We are, by every measure, the good guys. We believe in trials, in rights, in appeals. We put murderers to death only after the system bends over backward to make sure we’re right. And even then, we do it rarely.

That is restraint. That is mercy. That is civilization. And it is long past time we stopped apologizing for it.

Part 3: The Republican Target

Now let’s bring it home and talk about politics right here in the United States. Because while Democrats love to scream about how Republicans are “violent” and “pro-death penalty,” history tells a very different story. If you want to know who’s really been targeted, shot at, wounded, and killed, look no further than the Republican Party.

Let’s start with assassinations. Four American presidents have been murdered while in office. Three of them were Republicans: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley. The lone Democrat? John F. Kennedy. So let’s quit pretending that Republican leaders are somehow the ones spreading violence. When it comes to presidents paying the ultimate price, it’s Republicans by a margin of three to one.

Now, who has been shot and survived? Again, the bullseye was painted on a Republican. Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, nearly killed by John Hinckley Jr. He took a bullet, and by sheer grit and the quick work of doctors, he lived. No Democratic president has ever been shot and wounded in office. Not one.

And what about attempts that didn’t quite hit the mark? Plenty of Democrats had close calls — Andrew Jackson had a would-be assassin’s pistols misfire in 1835, Harry Truman faced a gunfight outside Blair House in 1950, Bill Clinton had a man spray bullets at the White House in 1994, and shots were fired at the Obama White House in 2011. Those are serious incidents, no question.

But Republicans? They’ve faced the fire too, and more often than the media likes to admit. Gerald Ford survived not one, but two assassination attempts in California in 1975. George W. Bush had a live grenade thrown near him in Georgia in 2005. And of course, we all remember Donald Trump in 2024, when he was shot and wounded at a rally in Pennsylvania — a moment that instantly joined the grim ledger of Republican presidents under fire. Add to that the foiled Iraqi plot to kill George H. W. Bush in 1993 and the 1974 plan to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon, and you start to see the pattern.

Here’s the pattern: when bullets fly in American politics, they overwhelmingly fly at Republicans. When blood has been shed in the Oval Office, it’s been Republican blood three out of four times. And when shots ring out on the campaign trail, it’s Republican candidates and presidents who keep ending up in the crosshairs.

So the next time you hear Democrats screaming about how Republicans are the “violent” ones, ask yourself: who’s really paying the price? Who’s really bleeding? Who’s really been buried? The record doesn’t lie. Republicans have taken the brunt of political violence in this country, and Democrats have the gall to accuse us of being the problem.

It’s the same twisted logic they use when they blame guns instead of criminals, or when they point to Trump as some existential threat while their own mayors preside over city blocks that look like war zones. It’s projection, plain and simple.

And Republicans ought to remember this. Every time you hear a Democrat wagging their finger about “Republican violence,” remember Lincoln. Remember Garfield. Remember McKinley. Remember Reagan. Remember Trump. It’s not our side that’s been spared. It’s our side that’s taken the hits.

Part 4: Democrat-Run Cities and the Murder Tally

Let’s get out of Washington for a minute and talk about where most Americans actually live: the cities. Because if you want to see what real violence looks like, don’t look at the Republican Party. Look at the murder counts racked up in Democrat-run cities, year after year.

Take 2023 — not ancient history, not something you can brush off as “old data.” The numbers are right there in black and white. Chicago: 617 homicides. Philadelphia: 410. New York City: 386. Los Angeles: 327. Houston: about 348. And that’s just the top of the list. Add Atlanta, 135. Jacksonville, 148. Columbus, 148. Even San Antonio, 164. The tally adds up fast.

Now here’s the kicker: every single one of those cities, with the exception of Dallas and Fort Worth, is run by a Democrat. And in many of them, the mayor isn’t just a Democrat, they’re also Black. Eric Adams in New York. Brandon Johnson in Chicago. Karen Bass in Los Angeles. Sylvester Turner in Houston. Andre Dickens in Atlanta. Vi Lyles in Charlotte. Now, you would think that with Black mayors in charge, there would be an all-out push to protect Black lives. Instead, what do we see? Black men, women, and children dying by the hundreds every single year, and the silence is deafening.

That’s not leadership. That’s not compassion. That’s a weird form of racism where the political class is willing to tolerate what amounts to Black genocide rather than admit their policies have failed. And the media? They cover for them. They’ll give you a hundred hours on Trump’s latest speech, but they won’t give you five minutes on the bloodbath in Chicago or Philadelphia.

Now compare those numbers to the national trend. In 2023, homicides actually fell nationwide. The FBI said murders dropped by about 12 percent across the country. But in these Democrat-run cities, the absolute numbers are still staggering. Hundreds of lives lost, mostly young, mostly Black, mostly ignored. And yet, the same mayors who preside over these killing fields have the nerve to lecture Trump, to point fingers at Republicans, to say we’re the problem.

No, let’s be honest. The problem is right there in their own backyards. They’ve got the blood on their streets, the funerals in their communities, and the policies that have failed time and again. And instead of taking responsibility, they scream about guns, they scream about Republicans, and they scream about Trump.

Here’s the truth: if you want to live in a city where the odds of getting shot are through the roof, keep electing Democrats. If you want candlelight vigils and “stop the violence” press conferences instead of real solutions, keep giving them power. But if you want fewer funerals, if you want safer streets, if you want your kids to make it home at night, it’s time to stop rewarding failure.

Republicans aren’t perfect. Nobody is. But Republicans are the ones who still believe in putting criminals behind bars, backing the police, and standing with law-abiding citizens instead of coddling thugs. That’s the dividing line. And until America wakes up to it, we’re going to keep seeing body counts in Democrat cities that look more like combat zones than communities.

So don’t tell me Republicans are the violent ones. Look at the numbers. Look at the cities. Look at who’s running them. And then ask yourself the only question that matters: how much more of this are we willing to tolerate?

Part 5: The Minority Myth

Now let’s deal with another lie that gets repeated until people start believing it: the idea that white men are “the majority,” that they “control everything,” and that everyone else is some permanent oppressed class. I’m sick and tired of hearing this garbage, because when you actually look at the numbers, the whole argument collapses.

Start with the basics. There are more women than men in America. Women make up about 50.5 percent of the population, men about 49.5 percent. By the plain definition of majority — 50 percent plus one — women are the only majority in this country. Men, as a whole, are technically the minority. That’s math. That’s not opinion.

Now break it down further. The group that gets demonized every time the news wants a scapegoat is “white men.” Let’s run the numbers. America has about 334 million people. Roughly 58 percent are non-Hispanic white. Split that by gender, and you get about 96 million white men. That works out to about 29 percent of the total population. That’s not a majority — that’s a minority. Period. End of discussion.

But here’s what happens. The activists and the media lump all white men and white women together, and then they lump in minorities when it suits them, and they cook the numbers until they get the story they want. They talk about “the majority” as if there’s some massive block of white men running the country like puppet masters. It’s a fantasy. White men make up less than one-third of the population. That’s not a majority by any definition.

And don’t get me started on the claim that white men “run all the businesses.” Even if every one of America’s six million employer firms were run by white men — and they’re not — that would still only represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population. The actual number of white male CEOs is even smaller. So the idea that white men dominate the economy is not just a stretch, it’s a flat-out lie.

Here’s the part that really burns me. Women are officially classified by the federal government as a disadvantaged group when it comes to contracting and business. That means the government itself says women are a “minority” category. So if women are a minority, and white men are less than 30 percent of the population, then guess what? Everybody is a minority. Everybody.

So the next time someone starts bellyaching about “the majority,” shut it down. There is no majority. There are only groups that politicians and activists pit against each other for power. The truth is that the so-called “majority” doesn’t exist anymore, and the division it creates is eating this country alive.

“United we stand, divided we fall.” That’s not just a phrase, that’s the reality. The division has to end. And the first step is throwing out these phony narratives about who has all the power and who’s oppressed. Because while we argue over imaginary majorities, the real problems keep killing people in our streets. Criminals are murdering our fellow citizens with extreme prejudice, illegal aliens are flooding into the workforce and undercutting wages for Americans of all colors and backgrounds, and our enemies abroad are getting stronger every day.

So let’s be blunt: everyone is a minority, and everyone has skin in the game. It’s time to stop the whining, stop the excuses, and get serious about cleaning up this country.

Part 6: Pulling It All Together

We’ve walked through a lot of history here. We’ve compared America to France and their beloved guillotine. We’ve looked at Stalin’s gulags, Mao’s famines, Cambodia’s killing fields, and Amin’s Uganda. We’ve talked about Angola’s endless civil war. We’ve gone down the list of American presidents targeted for assassination — Republicans overwhelmingly paying the price. We’ve gone city by city in our own country, pointing to the murder numbers that Democrats and their media allies don’t want you to see. And we’ve dismantled the lie about some mythical white male “majority” running the show.

Now let’s tie the knot.

The record is clear: America is not brutal compared to the rest of the world. America is not guilty of mass murder. America is not guillotining thousands or starving millions. America executes a few of the worst criminals after decades of due process. That’s restraint. That’s civilization.

Meanwhile, look at what the so-called compassionate leaders have given us at home. Democrat mayors in Democrat cities preside over body counts that rival war zones. The overwhelming share of the victims are Black men, women, and children. And the media, in its twisted loyalty, covers for them. If the mayor is Black, the narrative gets even more grotesque — as if tolerating Black-on-Black homicide is some sort of civic virtue. It’s not. It’s betrayal.

And yet, Democrats have the nerve to scream about Trump. They scream about Republicans. They scream about guns. They scream about the death penalty. But let’s be honest: it was under Trump that murder rates fell. It was under Trump that police had support. It was under Trump that criminals knew there were consequences. Then Biden takes over, chaos explodes, and homicides spike. Now, with Trump back in the spotlight, numbers are falling again. That’s not an accident. That’s leadership.

And while we bicker here at home, Russia and China aren’t waiting. They’re probing, hacking, infiltrating, and preparing. Africa is still riddled with strongmen and warlords. The world is lining up its pieces, and war is coming. Not a maybe, not a someday. It’s a matter of when. Sabotage, infiltration, proxy wars — they’re already happening. The real fight is coming.

So let’s stop pretending. America is the good guy. Always has been. But we don’t act like it anymore. We’re divided, distracted, and self-absorbed. United we stand, divided we fall — and right now, the division is killing us.

Here’s what has to happen. We clean house at home: no more coddling criminals, no more open borders, no more excuses for failed mayors presiding over slaughter. We prepare abroad: rebuild our strength, rebuild deterrence, and make sure the bad guys fear us again. And we recognize that one administration isn’t enough. Trump is a start. But it will take the 48th, the 49th, and whoever comes after to keep this nation on track. This is a generational fight.

The choice is simple. We either get serious now, or we fall apart later. We either stand as the good guys, or we let the bad guys write the ending. I know where I stand. And I hope you do too.