Trump is surely in shock

If anyone can understand what the Trump family has been through in recent days, it’s Patti Davis. New York Times In an essay, Ronald Reagan’s daughter recalls the day in 1981 when her own father was shot by a gunman. Davis recounts personal details — “my mother slept with one of my father’s shirts pressed against her face so she could smell him” — and writes that the Trumps were likely shocked:

• “For all the apparatus that surrounds a president or a presidential candidate, for all the planning, for all the security, it all comes down to this: They are flesh and blood, they are human beings like the rest of us, and their lives can change in a split second.”

Of course, anyone who has ever been shot in the head by a loved one, famous or not, can relate to that feeling, Davis adds. “It unsettles you in the first horrific, chaotic moments, and it reorganizes you in the days and years that follow.” She hopes that Trump’s shooting might also change the nation, that it might “shock us and remind us of who we’re supposed to be,” meaning not “rabid” people who use guns to influence an election. “I long for the America that wrapped itself around my family after my father was shot, and I pray that we can find it in ourselves.” (Read the full essay, or read the latest on the shooting.)