Donald Trump’s reaction to Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on him has been to blame Democrats, baselessly insisting that the purported gunman was inspired by “the rhetoric of [President Joe] Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris.”
And in a social media post on Monday, Trump made it clear that while he wants everyone else to shut up, he intends to only ramp up his own vitriol. In that statement, Trump blamed “the Rhetoric, Lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC Debate,” along with the court cases he is facing, for taking the country to “a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust.”
“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” he added.
If this seems like the ultimate exercise in hypocrisy, it is. If it seems like an effort to muffle his opponents while he ramps up attacks … yes.
On Sunday, a 58-year-old building contractor with a large criminal history hung around outside the fence of Trump’s Florida golf course for more than 12 hours before allegedly aim a rifle through the fence. At that point, Secret Service agents fired at him, and he fled the scene and was soon arrested. So far, he has been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
The man reportedly never came in sight of Trump or fired his weapon. But assuming he had intentions of harming Trump, there’s obviously a cause for deep concern.
But rather than briefly flirt with a “unity” message, Trump used a Monday interview with Fox News Digital to keep up the all-the-blame-for-them, no-rules-for-me divide.
"He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it," Trump said of the suspected gunman. "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out."
Trump wants to go on calling Harris “Comrade Kamala.” He wants to say that Democrats are “destroying the country.” He wants to say the debates were rigged, that Harris is a liar, and the court cases are political. And he wants opponents to be silenced.
Just one day before the incident in Florida, Trump running mate JD Vance was on CNN to talk about the racist lies that both he and Trump have been promoting about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Those lies have led to at least 33 bomb threats in the small Ohio city, as well as threats of other forms of violence, according to the state’s Republican governor. The lies have caused the closure of schools and universities and led to the cancellation of “Springfield Culture Fest,” which celebrated the city’s diversity.
When confronted on CNN about the safety concerns that his words were generating, Vance had a quick response, asking, "Are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence?”
That was early on Sunday, before the apparent assassination attempt on Trump. And one day later, Vance put out a very long tweet in which he claimed that “The rhetoric is out of control.” He went on to blame the media first for not giving enough attention to events in Florida, then for not sufficiently attacking Harris for things she said about Trump.
“The double standard is breathtaking,” Vance wrote. Then, after complaining that the media’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine had inspired the incident in Florida—and that “BigTech” had censored the Hunter Biden laptop story—he complained that any efforts to calm his racist statements was censorship.
“It is one thing to say that pets are not, in fact being eaten, and another thing to say that anyone who disagrees is trying to murder people,” Vance wrote. “Dissent, even vigorous dissent, is a great tradition of the United States. Censorship is not.”
Except neither the media nor any Democratic lawmaker said that Vance was trying to murder people. They said that his statements were creating a threat to both Haitian immigrants and others by painting them with disgusting, dehumanizing terms. Which Vance dismisses in the same statement.
“In Springfield, a psychopath (or a foreign government) calls in a bomb threat,” Vance wrote, “so they blame that on President Trump (and me).”
A suspected gunman in Florida poses a potential threat to Trump, and even though that man reportedly supported many Republican candidates and backed Trump in at least one of the last two elections, Vance and Trump both blame Democratic statements for his actions.
In Springfield, statements made by Trump and Vance are directly inspiring a campaign of terror. But they don’t accept any blame.
Either they accept no responsibility, or they are concerned about violence only when it’s directed at them. Either way, this isn’t just hypocrisy, it’s perversion.