Page 48 of 107 Days

I was home at the vice president’s residence, prepping remarks for a speech I planned to give on a subject of vital importance to me: the broken state of US childcare.

Too few places available for families; a labor-intensive profession with poverty-level pay; and razor-thin profit margins for the small-business owner.

In short, a national disgrace and an issue where we lagged most wealthy nations.

Our Build Back Better agenda had been designed to address this but had run up against a recalcitrant Republican Congress who, for all their talk of family values, refused to see either the social or the economic upside of fixing the problem.

I was working on my remarks when staff called with the news of another attempt on Trump’s life.

My initial reaction: How could this keep happening?

I was relieved he was okay.

I’ve had a protective detail since I became San Francisco district attorney.

I have adapted to a life in which every move I make outside my own home must be coordinated with my protection detail.

Death threats against me have been innumerable.

I never talk about the threats or the people who have been prosecuted.

Some elected officials speak of these things; I never have.

I am not going to be Oh, woe is me . I never carry myself in a way that I feel vulnerable or act vulnerable. But I am acutely aware of it.

When you have been in the public eye as long as I have, people have long memories for things I have done that they didn’t like and may have stewed over for years.

I got some disapproval for saying that if somebody breaks into my house, they’ll get shot.

But it’s the truth. I’ve never made a big deal of being a gun owner, but I have a reason to have a handgun.

I store it securely. And I know how to use it.

Staff briefed me on what little was known of the attack.

Trump had set out for an unscheduled Sunday-afternoon golf game at his West Palm Beach golf course.

He was on the fifth fairway just after 1:30 p.m. when a member of his Secret Service detail saw the muzzle of a semiautomatic rifle poking through bushes at the very next hole.

The agent opened fire; the would-be shooter fled.

Trump, thankfully, had been whisked to safety.

Very soon after, we learned to our relief that the man had been apprehended.

Trump was quick to blame our campaign rhetoric for calling him out as a threat to democracy.

He should have been blaming the lax gun laws he championed, since the arrested man, who had a criminal record, had been flagged by the FBI as being illegally in possession of weapons, including a fully automatic machine gun.

Despite numerous convictions, he’d obviously had no trouble obtaining a lethal weapon.

That night, Elon Musk posted his reckless tweet, musing as to why no one had tried to shoot me or Joe Biden.