Democrats Encouraged Violence and Got It Twice
– By Howard Sierer –
Pres. Biden, Vice Pres. Harris and far too many voices in what historically had been the responsible media have spent years whipping the left into a violent frenzy over Trump. The tenor of their rhetoric leaves little doubt as to how two “crazies” could believe they were acting in the national interest when they attempted to assassinate him.
Democrats wave off any connection or responsibility. But the connection is all too apparent by looking back at how they have inflamed the nation’s politics with their scalding rhetoric.
Biden in his infamous Red Wedding speech in Philadelphia two years ago, declared Trump and MAGA Republicans were threats to democracy. He has used that dangerous rhetoric ever since, repeating versions of it and expanding on the supposed threat nearly every week.
For example on June 28 this year, the president posted on X that Trump is “a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.” In an over-the-top call with donors in July, he said it’s “time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Two would-be assassins took that literally.
Vice President Harris warned that Trump would be a dictator, weaponize the Justice Department against his political opponents, and destroy the Constitution. She should know: those are exactly the things she and Biden have been doing for the last three years.
Previously-responsible leftist media have been pushing what Mollie Hemingway called assassination prep: nonstop comparisons of Trump to Hitler, incessant warnings that if Trump isn’t stopped it will mean the end of democracy in America, and mantra-like repetition that a Trump victory in November means the gulag for every leftist identity group.
The June issue of The New Republic magazine explicitly compared Trump to Hitler, morphing his picture on the cover into a semblance of Hitler. That issue contains multiple essays about how grim life will be under Dictator Trump. The editors justified this by saying, “Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”
The Atlantic magazine recently titled an entire issue “If Trump Wins,” featuring dozens of articles outlining all the ways Trump will destroy America if he wins a second term. Top of the list is a piece by David Frum on autocracy under Trump, followed by other authors on misogyny, corruption, extremism, and so on.
Following the first assassination attempt, Frum posted a rant blaming Trump for his own attempted assassination, declaring that “the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.”
Amazingly, a bill proposed this spring by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson would have stripped Trump of Secret Service protection. To most of us, that looks like a deliberate attempt to make it as likely as possible that an attack on Trump’s life would happen — and succeed.
Following each assassination attempt, Democrats expressed their usual platitudes to “take down the temperature” and “unite.” But they had long since fired up the political blast furnace to peak temperature by months of fiery rhetoric. Sprinkling it with a few watering cans now will have little effect.
Harris condemned the most recent assassination attempt in a statement issued by the White House: “We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more to violence.” A good start in this direction would be for Democrats and the media to renounce their past violent rhetoric whose effect has been to encourage the worst, most unstable elements in the country to carry out political terrorism.
Trump has continued his pattern of random, ill-considered and often untruthful comments and is no model of responsible campaigning. But if anything positive can be said for him, at least he hasn’t called for “putting Biden in the bullseye” or likened him to Communist China’s brutal Mao Tse-tung who killed millions.
With even a modest amount of common sense, Biden, Harris and the leftist media could have foreseen the consequences of painting Trump as the devil incarnate, as bad as Hitler and a personal threat to all Americans. Whether one supports Trump or opposes him, I urge all Americans to do so with a sense of decency and common courtesy.
