When former President Donald Trump took the debate stage last week, David Muir didn’t ask him about the assassin’s bullet that grazed his head on national television six weeks prior. He didn’t ask Vice President Kamala Harris, either. In fact, through the entire two hours, neither he nor Harris’ sorority sister so much as mentioned one of the most dramatic moments in modern political history.
The next night, Power the Future founder and sometime Blaze Media guest Daniel Turner put it succinctly:
God hope [it] would never happens to anybody, [but] if it had been the vice president or Joe Biden who almost got killed at an event, the opening line to Mr. Trump would have been, ‘President Trump, six weeks ago your opponent was almost killed. The political violence in this country nearly cost her her life. Is there something you would like to say to her right now that she survived this assassination attempt? And do you agree that we have reached a level of political violence that is unattainable and you hold some responsibility?’ That would have been the opening damn question 100 percent.
But they didn’t talk about any of it. Instead, they let Harris play the reasonable adult and actually lecture her opponent on decency and rhetoric. They passed right over the shooting and talked about the Jan. 6 riot from nearly four years ago instead. Maybe they reasoned the kid who shot a man their friends had been calling an existential threat to democracy for eight years wasn’t relevant.
First it’s a conspiracy theory. Then it’s happening, but it has nothing to do with them and doesn’t matter anyway.
Muir and Linsey Davis aren’t acting alone, of course. All their Democrat media friends also wanted to move on from that whole awkward shooting thing as quickly as possible. By this past Thursday, the Washington Post was even complaining that Trump was still talking about it at all. “Trump stokes suspicions about assassination attempt, raising fears of more violence,” a Sept. 12 headline read. “After an initial period of relative restraint, the former president has begun blaming the shooting on his opponents and amplifying conspiracy theories.”
Three days later, it happened again.
This isn’t just Democrat bias. It’s absolute malfeasance by the American media. It’s a betrayal, and it’s not really fixable. These people are demented. Trump has broken them, and they really think they’re characters in some Resistance drama about the arc of history and all that. It’s gross and it’s stupid, but that’s the reality.
In September 2023, NBC published a piece headlined, “Tucker Carlson stokes conspiracies, claims U.S. is ‘speeding towards’ assassination of Trump,” by Daniel Arkin, a national correspondent over there. Tucker, he wrote, made the prediction “without evidence” — a common phrase media midwits use to dismiss alternative viewpoints. Ten months later, of course, Trump would be shot in a deadly attack. And 12 months after, a second gunman would be arrested.
First it’s a conspiracy theory. Then it’s happening, but it has nothing to do with them and doesn’t matter anyway. You might be unsurprised to learn Arkin has restricted who can read or interact with his Twitter account.
In covering the second seeming attempt, networks didn’t even play footage or pictures from the previous attempt. Instead, they used pictures from courtroom appearances.
“Do you expect there to be calls within the Trump campaign to … [tone] down the rhetoric?” MSNBC weekend anchor Alex Witt asked on the air. “[Tone] down the violence?”
And so it goes.
Blaze News: Trump issues defiant statement after second assassination attempt
Blaze News: Alexander Vindman tries to outdo his wife’s ghoulish response to the latest attempt on Trump’s life
Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter
Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.
Opinion & analysis, Politics