On Sunday, Donald Trump became the first presidential candidate in a half century to survive two back-to-back assassination attempts. Both of these assassination attempts involved significant failures by the Secret Service. And they raise the question of whether Donald Trump, who’s currently the leading candidate for president of the United States, will survive until Election Day. That is the current state of American democracy, thanks to the self-described protectors of democracy.

We know why this is happening. Donald Trump, more so than any other candidate since Nixon, is openly antagonistic to the most entrenched interests in Washington — in particular the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. And he’s difficult to control. Donald Trump is not an easily replaceable actor like Kamala Harris, who’s only capable of reciting canned soundbites. Whether you like Donald Trump or not, everyone knows that’s true. And now that lawfare has failed, his enemies believe that they’re out of options. Assassinating Donald Trump would change the trajectory of this country forever. Assassinating any other politician would not.

This is why, for the better part of a decade, the Left has attempted to establish a pretext for Trump’s assassination. They labeled Trump a traitor to the country. They said he was a double-agent working for Vladimir Putin. They branded Trump as the gravest “threat to democracy” since the Civil War. They repeatedly claimed that Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” even when he said the opposite. 

Even after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania two months ago, nothing about Democrats’ plans changed. Tim Walz again labeled Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to democracy,” saying he will “put people’s lives in danger” if he returns to the White House. From the debate stage, Kamala Harris again invoked Charlottesville and repeated the “very fine people” hoax. She said Trump vowed to be a “dictator.” She told Americans that Trump had promised a “bloodbath” if he lost the election, when he was talking about the auto industry suffering a “bloodbath” in terms of job losses. That’s how flagrant the propaganda has become.

But if you’re unhinged and uninformed — say, if you’re the kind of person who might try to murder a political candidate — then these kinds of lies might resonate with you. That’s why Democrats repeat them, over and over. They’re hoping someone will take their lies seriously, and act on them. And that appears to be what happened yesterday. The alleged shooter at Trump’s golf course has been identified as Ryan Routh. He’s made nearly two dozen donations to Democrats. He was also reportedly arrested for “possessing a weapon of mass destruction” — referring to a fully automatic machine gun — back in 2002. So he was on law enforcement’s radar, to put it mildly.

And on social media this April, an account with Routh’s name posted this message to Joe Biden:

Your campaign should be called something like KADAF. Keep America Democratic and free. Trumps should be MASA … make American slaves again master. DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose. We cannot afford to fail. The world is counting on us to show the way.

Yes, he wrote, “democracy is on the ballot.” That’s a line you may have heard before. The gunman is reciting the exact talking points that Democrats have repeated endlessly for the past several years. In particular, the shooter also bought completely into the Democrats’ narrative on Ukraine — to the point that he recorded this interview with Newsweek. Watch:

It’s all about being “caring and kind” and “taking care of one another,” says the man who goes on to attempt an assassination. This is the level of cognitive dissonance that now defines many on the Left. These are the same people with “Love is love” lawn signs who will try to get you fired if you disagree with them.

But the more important thing is that, again, the gunman is parroting exactly what Democrats are saying. He’s saying Ukraine is completely good, and Russia is completely evil, because that’s what Democrats have been saying ever since Russiagate. There’s no room for any kind of nuance. The official Democrat Party line is that we have to fight Russia overseas using Ukraine as a proxy, or else we’ll have to fight Russia on the streets in this country. Adam Schiff literally said that during the first impeachment trial. It’s insane rhetoric. But inevitably, someone was going to take it seriously.

And that appears to be what Ryan Routh did. Two years ago, the Semafor reported that Ryan Routh said, “I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week,” concerning assistance to Ukraine’s war effort. Then, one year ago, The New York Times reported that Routh had traveled to Ukraine several times — and was even working on illegal plans to recruit Taliban fighters to move to Ukraine. He also said online that he was willing to fight and die for Ukraine. This is someone who clearly believed all of the propaganda that Democrats used in order to secure that first impeachment. 

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It’s worth mentioning at this point that we’ve already learned a lot more information about Ryan Routh than we ever learned about Thomas Crooks, who tried to murder Donald Trump in Butler. The Secret Service held a press conference just a few hours after this incident yesterday, answering a bunch of questions. But they ducked the press conference the night of the Butler shooting. At the same time, there are still a lot of unanswered questions here. Last night, Facebook apparently deleted Routh’s account, for instance. What was on that account, exactly? And what if any communications did Routh have with anyone in Ukraine, beyond what’s already been reported?

Those are questions we need answers to. At the same time, it’s important to understand that Ryan Routh himself probably isn’t the biggest part of this story, just like Thomas Crooks wasn’t the biggest part of the first assassination attempt. We are not witnessing one or two lone gunmen who snapped — which is what we saw with the attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, for example. We’re not even seeing anything similar to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which raised a lot of questions about the potential involvement of the U.S. government. When Kennedy was murdered, the media and the security state at least pretended to be upset by it. But with Donald Trump, the opposite is happening. In fact, the media didn’t even bother to act like they were upset by the day’s events. Instead, the corporate press immediately suggested that Donald Trump bore some responsibility for his own attempted murder. Here’s MSNBC for example:

There were similar clips after the Butler shooting. There’s no accident here. These people are every bit as ghoulish as they appear. Saying Donald Trump needs to tone down his rhetoric after his own assassination attempt is like blaming a rape victim for wearing a short skirt. How about MSNBC tones down their rhetoric? How about they stop comparing Donald Trump to Hitler every other day?

This kind of reaction isn’t confined to MSNBC. Last night, “60 Minutes” ran another special on January 6, once again portraying Trump as a threat to democracy. And for several hours yesterday, there was no statement from the White House condemning the attempted assassination. By the time Kamala Harris finally put out a statement on social media last night, she called it a “possible” assassination attempt — probably to encourage her followers to say it’s all a hoax.

Meanwhile, top Democrats continued lying. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House, wrote:

Extreme MAGA Republicans are the party of a national abortion ban and Trump’s Project 2025. We must stop them.

That was posted on Hakeem Jeffries’ account more than a half hour after gunfire was first reported at Trump’s golf course. Nothing in the statement was true. Republicans are not the party of a national abortion ban, as unfortunate as that is. And Donald Trump has repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, which is also unfortunate in some ways. These are just more lies in service of telling people that “we must stop” Trump because he’s so “extreme.” This is not the kind of rhetoric that you should be using in any context, because lying like this is irresponsible. But it’s especially galling when a Left-winger is actively in the process of trying to murder the president for the second time in two months.

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And there were many reactions along these lines. Rachel Vindman wrote: “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon.” So who is Rachel Vindman? She’s the wife of Alexander Vindman, the main witness against Trump during the first impeachment — the one about Trump briefly pausing financial assistance to Ukraine. Alexander Vindman was also offered the role of Ukrainian defense minister a few years ago. For his part, after the assassination attempt yesterday, Alexander Vindman tweeted that Trump should be disqualified from office. So this whole situation certainly has the appearance of some very powerful and well-connected people who don’t want Trump to cut Ukraine’s funding again. And they apparently wouldn’t mind if Trump were killed in order to prevent that from happening.

Meanwhile, NBC News went out of its way to link the shooting to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s comments on the ongoing crisis in Springfield, Ohio. They didn’t point out that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have done everything they can to present Donald Trump as a neo-Nazi terrorist. Instead, they faulted Donald Trump and JD Vance for bringing attention to the tens of thousands of Haitians that have descended on a town of just 60,000 people. Watch:

See how this works? Donald Trump is to blame for inciting violence because he talks about problems in Springfield. But Democrats aren’t to blame for inciting violence because they talk about how Donald Trump is the next Hitler. The whole “inciting violence” thing only applies to Donald Trump.

At this point I could play the footage from Chris Rufo, of what appears to be someone’s pet being grilled in Ohio. We could go through all the 911 calls about Haitians carrying geese away, or the city council testimony about ducks being beheaded and so on. But none of that’s actually important. Here’s the important point: Even if Donald Trump were completely wrong about what’s happening in Springfield, it still wouldn’t justify someone trying to murder him. It also wouldn’t justify Democrats calling Trump an existential threat to democracy who must be “stopped” or “eliminated.” There is a clear difference between a debate about what open borders are doing to this country, and a debate about whether Donald Trump should be allowed to run for office without being imprisoned or shot. The Left is having the latter debate right now. That’s the problem.

Actually, to be more precise, it’s not just the Left. Neoconservatives — who are now indistinguishable from many Leftists — are joining in that debate, too. Here’s Bill Kristol for example. He wrote this several hours after it was confirmed that the shooting at the golf course was an attempted assassination:

Walz should consider cancelling the debate with Vance. Vance would use his time on a national stage to slander minorities, further poison the national discourse, and incite potential violence with lies. Walz could rebut Vance’s falsehoods. But why risk the further incitement?

There are thousands of posts like this, from prominent Democrats and random people. They’re all over the Internet. People are blaming Donald Trump for being shot at. It’s so pervasive that you have to wonder what’s coming next. At the press conference yesterday, the local sheriff made several comments that raise serious concerns about the Secret Service’s willingness and ability to protect Donald Trump. Here’s one of them:

In other words, there was no secure perimeter here. There was no checkpoint that the shooter had to pass through. He could just walk up to the tree-line with a rifle and set up a sniper’s nest. And if that one agent hadn’t noticed the rifle barrel, then he would have been able to shoot Donald Trump. That’s how poorly Donald Trump is being protected by the Secret Service, two months after someone tried to murder him on live television. And that’s not because it’s impossible to secure the golf course. The sheriff went on to admit that, if Donald Trump were the sitting president, the whole golf course would’ve been secured. No one with a rifle would’ve been allowed anywhere near Trump, much less within 500 yards of him. Watch:

This is the kind of “protection” that Donald Trump is receiving two months after the attempted assassination in Butler. Because he’s not the president, the Secret Service are allowing armed men with rifles to roam around in the trees by his golf course. They just don’t have the resources to set up a perimeter, I guess. There’s just no way the Secret Service has the budget to seal off the course. Everyone in the entire country knows that Joe Biden is in far less danger right now than Donald Trump. But he’s the president, and Donald Trump isn’t. Therefore, people basically get to take pot shots at Donald Trump from now until the election. That’s effectively what the sheriff is saying.

There are signs that, at least, there will be an actual investigation into this attempted assassination. Last night Ron DeSantis wrote:

The State of Florida will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination at Trump International Golf Club. The people deserve the truth about the would be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee.

Based on how the Biden administration stonewalled after the Butler shooting, this is obviously a necessary step. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. We have a federal government that’s actively trying to cover-up the attempted murder of Donald Trump, based on the testimony of the Secret Service director a month ago. And they’re clearly not doing their best to protect Trump now. In particular, any connections between this shooter and Ukraine need to be thoroughly investigated. We need to know how the shooter learned about Trump’s location on the golf course, especially since it wasn’t published in any schedule. And the Secret Service needs to explain why Donald Trump isn’t receiving anywhere near the level of protection he should be receiving.

In the meantime, what’s necessary is for everyone in the corporate press and the Democrat Party — who has pushed all of these lies about the “end of democracy” and so on — to apologize profusely for the damage they have done to this country. Then they should resign and never hold another job in the media, or the government, ever again. Yesterday on CNN — the network that pushed so many Russiagate lies — there was one analyst who suggested that maybe some accountability might be in order. Watch:

The problem is that there are no indications this will happen. It didn’t happen after Butler, and it won’t happen now. From the rhetoric that Democrats and the media are using, it’s now abundantly clear that a lot of very powerful people want Donald Trump dead. They’re not even trying to hide it. It’s also clear that the Secret Service isn’t capable of preventing that outcome.

As a result, the next two months will be unlike any other in American history. Trump supporters don’t simply have to hope that their candidate wins the election. They also have to hope that Kamala Harris supporters won’t kill their candidate. That’s what they tried to do in Butler two months ago. It’s what they tried to do on Sunday. And thanks to the self-appointed defenders of democracy in the corporate press and the leadership of the Democrat Party, it’s all but assured that before long, they will try again.

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