In the age of digital media, it’s never hard to find ridiculous takes on the issues of the day. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is no different.

The incident, which occurred on Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, has elicited tons of speculation about the shooting and the motivations of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who is believed to have carried out the attack.

However, the shooting has also attracted absurd takes from those seeking to leverage the incident for political purposes. This is likely what motivated DEI expert Shaun Harper to publish a piece in Forbes in which he asks whether Trump will use the fact that he was shot to appeal to black voters.

The article, which has been deleted, first asked whether the former president would “seize the apparent assassination attempt against him as an opportunity to meaningfully address the epidemic of gun violence in America.”

The author noted the high rates of gun violence against black Americans.

Butler is less than an hour north of Pittsburgh. It isn’t an urban center. But many big cities in which large numbers of Black Americans reside have long been plagued with inexcusably high levels of gun violence. Everytown Research and Policy’s analysis of 2018-2022 FBI data shows that Black people in Pittsburgh are 14 times more likely to die by gun homicide than are whites in the place affectionately known as “the Steel City.”

On the other side of the commonwealth, the gun homicide rate is 30.8 people per 100,000 residents. Blacks comprise the city’s single-largest racial group. They’re five times more likely to die by gunfire than are whites. Milwaukee, where this year’s Republican National Convention is being held, has the sixth-highest homicide by firearm rate in the nation. There, Blacks are 6.7 times more likely to be shot and killed than are white residents.

Harper highlighted how Trump “has repeatedly contended that the August 2023 release of his criminal mugshot deeply resonated with Black voters because they know firsthand the unfairness of our nation’s criminal justice system” and claimed he “relied on that narrative to persuade more Black Americans to cast votes for him this November.”

Harper acknowledges that “More Black men now than four years ago say they’re voting for Trump this time” but also points out that “not many of them say they’re planning to do so because of any notion of shared kinship with judicial injustice.”

In a particularly ridiculous moment, the author discusses how Trump raised his fist after being shot while being carried off the stage by the Secret Service. He compares it to how black American Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised fists while standing on the podium to receive their awards.

“The photograph of what has since become known as the “Black Power Salute” remains one of the most iconic images in global sports history. Hopefully Trump doesn’t claim that his raised fist was an homage to Smith and Carlos, two powerful Black Americans,” Harper writes.

In June 2020, many Black Americans and supporters from other racial groups marched in cities all across the nation with their fists raised. They were protesting Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Many outraged citizens peacefully marched outside the White House. Then-President Trump weaponized the National Guard and law enforcement against them. But now, just over four years later, there’s a chance that his raised fist at the Pennsylvania rally becomes erroneously connected to the Black people who were marching with fists raised in rallies in summer 2020 and at other moments in American history. Let’s hope not.

It is not difficult to see why Forbes deleted the piece. It is utter nonsense. Sure, some in the Trump Camp ridiculously claimed that the former president’s mugshot would somehow make him more appealing to black voters. However, this does not mean that the former president will respond to his shooting by saying, “Hey black people, you’re always getting shot, now we have something in common!”

It sounds like something a X troll would say as a joke.

Moreover, the notion that Trump should now support gun control after the assassination attempt, as the author implies, is also insane. It has been established time and time again that gun laws do not prevent bad actors from engaging in violence. At this point, it appears folks like Harper are simply grasping at straws.