There have been two known assassination attempts against President Donald Trump in the past 65 days. In the lead-up to the first, Democrats and their allies in the media spared no expense vilifying and dehumanizing Kamala Harris’ opponent — characterizing him as a threat to democracy, to minorities, and to freedom itself.
After the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Democrats and media partisans were met with
desperate appeals to tone down their vitriol and incendiary rhetoric, including by a victim of a recent Democratic terrorist attack.
Rather than engage in some soul-searching or exercise self-restraint, the left
doubled down after both incidents.
Below are five claims Democrats and/or their
allies in the media advanced that effectively set the stage for attempts on Trump’s life.
1. ‘Democracy is on the ballot’
The Washington Post
complained Thursday about President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he “took a bullet to the head” because of what Democrats and their allies in the media say about him.
Days later, Ryan Routh, a
Democratic donor with an intense interest in Ukraine’s war effort, allegedly tried to assassinate Trump in Florida.
New York magazine then couldn’t wait a full day after the second assassination attempt to double down and restate, “Trump is a threat to democracy.”
Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks, Routh had a massive online presence, which sleuths managed to document before social media companies began their routine scrub. It is clear from Routh’s posts that his radical views were informed in part by Democratic talking points — that contrary to the Washington Post’s suggestion, Trump was right again.
Prior to his arrest, Routh
reportedly posted about how “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot” this election.
This is one of Kamala Harris’
go-to lines, which has also been parroted by other Democrats.
On July 2, Harris posted an image of Trump captioned, “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one.”
In the corresponding message, she wrote, “Democracy is on the ballot in November.”
Harris has also coupled this statement with combative language.
For instance, on June 21, Harris
posted on Facebook, “Our democracy is on the ballot. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”
2. ‘Greatest threat’
Democrats routinely refer to Trump as a threat to democracy, which appears to be a euphemism for their hold on power.
‘He is a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms.’
Shortly after a Biden official’s group got the Democratic incumbent’s top rival
temporarily removed from the primary ballot in Colorado late last year, Biden tweeted, “Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy.”
Years after
calling Republicans “enemies of the state,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) similarly suggested in April that Trump is “a great threat to our democracy.”
The Democratic National Committee has repeatedly recycled this language. For instance, on June 27, the DNC
circulated the following message:
Donald Trump, who’s repeatedly promised to be a dictator on ‘day one,’ if elected and warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if not, continues to give election deniers and insurrectionists a platform — from installing dangerous conspiracy theorists to leading ‘election integrity’ efforts at the RNC and promising pardons for January 6 insurrectionists. Democracy is at stake this November and if Donald Trump retakes power the survival of our democracy will be at risk.
Kamala Harris also
claimed on June 27, “He is a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms” — a line she has repeated numerous times.
3. Nazi comparisons
Short on imagination and desperate for a historical parallel to underscore Trump’s supposed threat to America, Democrats and their media allies
decided early on they would go with Adolf Hitler.
In a 2019
speech, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said that Hitler “rode a wave of nationalism and anti-Semitism to power. Replace anti-Semitism with ‘all Latinos crossing our borders are rapists, drug dealers and murderers.’ Does that sound familiar?”
‘We’d better fight.’
Johnson, who is now facing re-election, added, “Americans, particularly black Americans, can’t afford to make that same mistake about the harm that could be done by a man named Hitler or a man named Trump.”
The Times (U.K.)
noted that in December 2023, CNN talking head Jake Tapper compared Trump’s rhetoric about illegal aliens to Hitler’s genocidal rhetoric about Jews.
“If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. The Jew, Hitler wrote, ‘poisons the blood of others,” said Tapper. “Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly.”
Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa similarly claimed, “Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini — two dictators many U.S. veterans gave their lives fighting.”
Former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill recently suggested on MSNBC that Trump is “even more dangerous” than Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
The New Republic ran a
photoshopped image of Trump as Hitler on the cover of its June issue, claiming, “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.'”
In an article published on the website of Poynter, the outfit that runs
PolitiFact, so-called media ethicist Kelly McBride and medical ethicist Art Caplan wrote, “Trump’s racist rhetoric should be viewed in the repugnant tradition of Hitler.” Politico captured the essence of the article prior to its apparent deletion.
There are, of course, various versions of the authoritarian smear. The Harris campaign apparently refrained from cracking a history textbook and
simply suggested that Trump will sincerely become a “dictator” this time around.
4. ‘Clear and present danger’
In 2021, New York Democrats Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed Trump was a “clear and present danger.”
Ocasio-Cortez
said Trump presents a “clear and present danger” both to the Congress and to the country.
Jeffries, who later
turned his sights on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, indicated that every moment Trump is in office is a “clear and present danger to the safety and security of the American people.”
Former Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig resurrected this talking point a year later,
claiming Trump, his allies, and his supporters remained a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”
The
leftist press has dutifully kept this suggestion alive.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board, for example, ran a
piece in January stating, “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger,” while also making sure to play some of Democrats’ other greatest hits, including “democracy is on the line.”
5. ‘Bull’s-eye’
Just days before the July 13 assassination attempt, President Joe Biden
said on a private phone call with campaign donors, “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that.”
Biden added on the July 8 call, “We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.”
Biden later
told NBC News’ Lester Holt, “It was a mistake to use the word.”
While Biden tried to retroactively soften his meaning, the damage was done. After all, he had worked to characterize Trump as a villain worthy of a bull’s-eye.
For instance, in his infamous red-lit September 2022 speech at Independence Historical Park in Philadelphia, Biden
claimed, “MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Although Biden’s July “bull’s-eye” remark is a relative standout, years earlier, Rick Wilson, the co-founder of the Lincoln Project — the anti-Trump group that
staged a fake white supremacist rally in 2021 to smear then-candidate Glenn Youngkin ahead of the Virginia gubernatorial election — told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that the donor class will have to “go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.”
As with Biden, the argument in defense of Wilson’s language was that it was supposedly figurative.
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Rhetoric, Violence, Incitement, Democratic, President donald trump, Assassination, Attempted assassination, Florida, Democratic violence, Propaganda, Democracy is on the ballot, Bullseye, Greatest threat, Nazi, Hitler, Politics