Survivor of baseball shooting discusses real threats to democracy

MILWAUKEE — Chuck Fleischmann and the team had just wrapped up a good practice on a suburban, D.C. baseball field when a killer came calling. 

The representative for Tennessee’s 3rd congressional district and his teammates suddenly found themselves sitting ducks as a deranged leftist gunman “hunting Republicans” opened fire. 

“We were talking about how well practice had gone,” Fleischmann told the Tennessean in a phone interview moments after the horrifying attack.  “And then as I went around, I heard a large single pop. One shot. I didn’t know it was a gun at first.”

He learned soon enough. Suddenly, he said, shots began “raining down” on the field. The Republican congressional baseball team, just wrapping up the final practice before the annual charity fundraiser game between the left and the right, was under attack. 

When it was all over, the gunman — apparently a devout follower of socialist Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — had shot four people, including then-House majority whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who was critically injured in the leftist terrorist attack. A Capitol Police officer (Scalise’s security detail thankfully was on the scene) was injured by the shots, as well as lobbyist Matt Mika and Zack Barth, a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams of Texas.

Miraculously, none of the victims died in a mass shooting that the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Alexandria found to be “an act of terrorism” that was “fueled by rage against Republican legislators.” The shooter was shot by officers and later died in a hospital. The New York Times at the time reported the shooter was “distraught” about Trump’s election. 

‘Courage Under Fire’

In an interview from this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Fleischmann told me that Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump brought the early morning of June 14, 2017 back into focus. 

“The shooter walked right past me,” he recalled. “That was a difficult eight-minute experience … Sadly, I saw dear friends like Steve Scalise injured.” 

“To see that carnage from someone who clearly wanted to hunt Republicans that day was political violence at its worst,” Fleischmann added. 

Like most Americans, the congressman said he was shocked when he learned that the former president and others had been shot at the campaign rally in Pennsylvania. 

“It wasn’t until I found out several minutes later that President Trump was going to be okay that I stopped shaking.” 

Before the gunman at the Pennsylvania rally was neutralized forever, he had gotten off several shots. His deadly errand ended in the killing of a rallygoer — a father who reportedly shielded his wife and daughters from the bullets — and critical injuries to two others. 

In what Fleischmann and others can only describe as divine intervention, Trump was struck in the right ear by a bullet. He not only walked away from the attempt on his life, but raised his fist in defiance as Secret Service agents surrounded him and helped him off stage. 

Scalise told convention attendees Tuesday night that while he was fighting for his life in 2017, then-President Trump was one of the first to see him at the hospital. 

“That’s the kind of leader he is. Courageous under fire, compassionate toward others,” Scalise, now House majority leader said. 

Galvanizing Moment

While the assassination attempt on Trump may have been stunning, it wasn’t surprising in a political environment in which Democrats have compared the GOP presidential nominee to Adolf Hitler and have fear mongered that, if returned to the White House, Trump would prove to be a dictator. President Joe Biden, whose administration has targeted his No. 1 political enemy through multiple prosecutions on bogus charges, now acknowledges after the Pennsylvania shootings that his recent command to donors that it’s “time to put Trump in a bullseye” perhaps wasn’t the best choice of words. He’s acknowledging it because he’s taken heat for his and fellow Democrats’ incendiary rhetoric, which has cooled little since Biden urged everyone to “lower the temperature” of political discourse in America. 

Fleischmann said the attack on Trump has only galvanized Republicans, steeling their resolve to get out the vote to fire Biden and make No. 45 No. 47. 

“The events of Saturday were tragic, horrible, very shocking to the entire nation,” the congressman said. “But the thankfulness that former President Trump is alive and well and vibrant and strong has really been felt since the opening of the convention.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.