AP
He had it coming.
It’s his own fault.
Don’t blame us.
That sums up how leading Democrats and their media handmaidens are reacting to the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Remorse and concern about him or even the perils of the rising tide of everyday violence are in short supply.
Early voting has started, and they weren’t going to waste a day expressing anything other than hostility for the opponent they love to hate.
And so the chorus of Dems and their propagandists are fending off every charge that they bear any responsibility for the repeated attempts to kill the leader of the Republican Party.
Just because they compare him to Hitler and Mussolini doesn’t mean they actually want him dead.
And a Dem congressman wasn’t to be taken literally when he said Trump had to be “eliminated.”
Hillary chimes in
The blanket denials are also aimed at making sure Trump doesn’t get any political benefit from being the target of another gunman.
To grant him even an iota of sympathy would be to give sympathy to the devil.
Leave it to Hillary Clinton to be the first to reach the bottom of the barrel.
Here’s what we know about the assassination attempt on Trump in Florida:
- Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Sept. 15, 2024.
- Trump sent out a statement to supporters soon after to report that he was “SAFE AND WELL.”
- The suspect — identified as Ryan Routh, 58, of Hawaii — was able to get within 300 to 500 yards of Trump at a chain link fence on the edge of the course, where he had an AK-47 and a GoPro camera set up, apparently to record the planned shooting.
- Routh has a history of supporting progressive causes online and has made 19 donations to Democratic candidates since 2019.
- A Secret Service agent spotted and opened fire on Routh as he put his gun through the fence. The suspect fled and was arrested on I-95 a short time later.
- According to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, Trump’s security detail was lighter because he isn’t a sitting president — despite the previous attempt on his life in July.
Trying to hock yet another book about herself — isn’t everything about her? — she complained on MSNBC that the media aren’t tough enough on Trump — the day after the assassination attempt!
“The press is still not able to cover Trump the way that they should,” Clinton told Rachel Maddow.
“I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is . . . his demagoguery, his danger to our country and the world. And stick with it.”
What I don’t understand is how much harder on Trump the media could be without suffering spontaneous combustion, but Maddow didn’t disagree with her guest.
Nor was she willing to discomfort viewers by reminding them that Clinton funded the phony Steele dossier in a bid to steal an election she couldn’t win.
Naturally, The New York Times signaled its approval of the Dems’ defiant stance.
Its top front-page piece on Tuesday was headlined “The Anger That Defines and Threatens Trump.”
See, he’s no angel, which is another way of suggesting he asked for it.
Follow the latest on the foiled assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Florida:
- Trump ‘safe and well’ after being targeted by would-be assassin with AK-47 assault rifle for second time in 2 months
- Shots fired near Trump live updates: Would-be shooter was 300-500 yards away, came with scope and GoPro — ‘Intent on filming’
- Who is alleged would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh?
- Trump assures he’s ‘SAFE AND WELL’ after Secret Service fires at man armed with assault rifle at president’s golf resort
- Trump’s security at golf course was lighter because he’s not sitting prez: official
- Demands mount for Trump to get same protection as Biden — after yet another assassination plot
Peter Baker, a once-sensible Washington reporter who has gone to the dark side, opined that Trump was “both a seeming inspiration and an apparent target of the political violence” coursing through America.
But the only evidence of “political violence” inspired by Trump he cited were bomb threats against Springfield, Ohio, the town where Trump wrongly claimed Haitian migrants were eating residents’ cats and dogs.
“He has long favored the language of violence in his political discourse,” Baker wrote.
Alas, the news Baker decided wasn’t fit to print was that Ohio’s governor announced Monday that all 33 of the bomb threats made against Springfield were hoaxes.
“Thirty-three threats; thirty-three hoaxes,” Gov. Mike DeWine said.
“None of these had any validity at all.”
He added that most of the threats came from foreign soil, though without identifying any countries.
Palin-case hypocrisy
The Times didn’t always blame the victim.
The paper published an infamous editorial linking Sarah Palin to a 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and left Dem Rep. Gabby Giffords with permanent brain injuries.
The Times claimed that a Palin-related super PAC was to blame because it supposedly produced a map that put the districts represented by Giffords and other Dems under what the paper called crosshairs.
The Times later called the claim a mistake and apologized, but Palin’s lawsuit for defamation was reinstated earlier this year after an appeals court vacated a trial verdict favoring the Times, citing judicial errors.
Not to be outdone, The Washington Post bellowed its strange view that Trump is no victim with two separate pieces.
One said the assassination plot gave Trump “another chance to blame Democrats as dangerous” and the second declared that Trump’s charges against Dems’ rhetoric were made “without evidence.”
The coldhearted tone recalls an imbalance pointed out by the late Charles Krauthammer.
“Republicans think Democrats are wrong, while Democrats think Republicans are evil,” he would say.
The distinction is significant.
Being wrong can be corrected.
Being evil puts you beyond the pale and requires a far different remedy.
Trump, of course, is no shrinking violet, which is why his appeal is so enduring among those who felt abandoned by both parties before he came down that escalator nine years ago.
While I find his boorish insults and name-calling juvenile, he doesn’t use language that invokes violence, which Joe Biden used just before the first murder attempt in July, when Trump was wounded and narrowly escaped death.
“It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye,” Biden said days before the shooting in Butler, Pa.
Biden later apologized, but Trump’s current opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, never backed off a similar tune she’s been singing for months.
In April, she declared that “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”
‘We cannot lose’
What a coincidence — that same month, Ryan Routh, the radical arrested Sunday in Florida, echoed her words.
He posted that “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose. We cannot afford to fail. The world is counting on us to show the way.”
Apparently Routh, like so many Dems, is not satisfied with the party’s use of the courts and criminal-justice system to take Trump off the field.
In their warped minds, there can be no limits as long as he’s still standing and has a chance to win the White House again.
The Dems’ denial of any responsibility and the media effort to turn the Florida case on its head by blaming Trump would be almost comical if they didn’t carry such grave implications.
They are signs of a growing acceptance of violence as part of the political landscape — as long as the other team can be blamed for starting it.
Hogwash. Defending comparisons to Hitler and talking about a “bull’s-eye” on a rival always crosses the line.
Moreover, justifying that language means we are more likely to get more violence aimed at the candidates.
From there it’s a short leap to imagine that voters will one day be seen as legitimate targets, too, as they are elsewhere.
Without doubt, there is much riding on this election.
Harris and Trump are offering such different visions for the country that on most key issues, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Their positions on the border, taxes, energy policies, crime and just about everything else are so far apart that the outcome is taking on a heightened importance.
Yet those sharp differences cannot become justifications for violence.
If they do, America as we know it will no longer exist and the world’s greatest experiment in self-government will have failed.