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The left-wing media and President Joe Biden’s administration have not refrained from framing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “threat to democracy,” despite the narrative possibly motivating the second alleged assassination attempt on his life.
A second assassination attempt threatened Trump’s life on Sept. 15 in West Palm Beach, Florida, after 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh pointed his AK-47-style rifle at the former president as he played golf. Trump and many conservatives have blamed the liberal media and the Biden-Harris administration for Routh’s motivation to kill Trump, as he echoed their claims that the former president is a “threat to democracy,” before the attempt.
Routh wrote in an April 22 post on “X” that “democracy is on the ballot” and that Democrats “cannot lose” the 2024 election. He further claimed Trump wanted to “make Americans slaves against master” and urged Biden to campaign on keeping “America democratic and free.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre invoked the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, to state that Trump is a “threat on our democracy” during a Sept. 17 press briefing, attempting to brush off any blame for the White House’s rhetoric causing the incident.
“When you have a former president who basically says that the results of the election were not the results of the election. When dozens of, more than 60 Republican judges said that it was a free and fair election,” Jean-Pierre said. “More than 60 said it was indeed a free and fair election. You had 2,000 people who were told to go to the Capitol, it was one of the darkest days of our democracy. There were people who, law enforcement officers who died because of what happened at the Capitol, and they were there because the former president told them to go there. I don’t know, if that’s not a threat on our democracy when it was the darkest days of our democracy, January 6, one of the darkest days.”
HBO host and comedian Bill Maher declared that Trump is a “threat to democracy” during his Friday night program while scoffing at arguments that the label is the cause of the assassination attempt. MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle said on Maher’s program, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during a late night appearance on September 21 that the American people are now well aware of the threat Trump allegedly poses to democracy.
“And let’s say you don’t like her answer, are you going to vote for Donald Trump?” Ruhle said. “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she is running against Trump. We have two choices, and so there are some things that you might not know her answer to, and in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough echoed this rhetoric on Monday by accusing Trump of being the largest “threat to democracy since the Civil War,” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
“Please tell me if this is not a threat to American democracy, what we’ve seen over the past four years, and if that is somehow hate speech that is riling up violent rhetoric, please tell me,” Scarborough said. “Define for me, what is a threat to American democracy? It is certainly not people speaking out against January 6, it’s certainly not people going around and speaking out against a presidential candidate and a former president saying he wants the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs executed because he was insufficiently disloyal … You think it’s Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff who came out and said Donald Trump says he wishes his generals could be like Hitler’s generals.”
Jonathan Chait, a political columnist at New York Magazine, wrote an op-ed on Sept. 16 titled, “Donald Trump Is a Threat to Democracy, and Saying So Is Not An Incitement,” to argue that the former president’s alleged threat to the U.S. stands true after the second assassination attempt.
“Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. That was true before an assassination attempt was foiled at his golf course Sunday, and it remains true after. Political violence in general, and assassinating presidential candidates specifically, also poses risks to democracy,” Chait wrote. “There is no contradiction between these ideas whatsoever. Yet Trump’s supporters have responded to both attempts on his life by muddying the waters, exploiting the near-tragedies with cynical efforts to redefine critiques of Trump’s authoritarian inclinations as violent provocation.”
The media has further accused Trump of bringing the assassination attempt upon himself by spewing violent rhetoric. “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg claimed that Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s own alleged violent rhetoric has led to these incidents during a Sept. 17 segment.
“[Trump] has been inciting violence since 2016, telling them to beat up hecklers, threatening to shoot up hecklers and migrants … I don’t remember Obama blaming his opponents when his White House was shot up in 2011,” Goldberg said. “You have to really take a look in a mirror to see the reflection. One of the reasons that everybody has survived is because the Secret Service has been doing their job. So quit blaming folks until you decide to take a look of what’s coming out of your mouth.”
Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile wrote in a Friday op-ed for The Hill that Democrats’ warnings about Trump are “legitimate criticisms.”
“It’s true that Biden, Harris and many Democrats and Republicans — including more than 100 high-level officials in Republican presidential administrations and former Republican members of Congress — have criticized Trump as a threat to democracy and our freedoms. But their criticisms are valid,” Brazile wrote.
“Instead of offering reasoned criticisms of Harris, Trump has reached new lows with hyperbolic lies. Instead of dialing back his inflammatory rhetoric, he is ratcheting it up, while demanding Democrats stop legitimate criticisms of him,” Brazile continued.
MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed the violence “is coming from MAGA” during a Sept. 17 segment, two days after the attempt on Trump’s life.
“The irony of it is that the violence, the actual violence we’re seeing comes much more disproportionately from MAGA themselves, whether it’s January 6th, whether it’s them threatening election workers,” Reid told David Rothkopf. “Whether it’s the bomb threats coming into schools in Springfield, the violence is coming from them, from their own supporters, yet they try to portray Haitian immigrants as the people to fear.”
MSNBC anchor Alex Witt also questioned whether Trump should tone down his own rhetoric on Sept. 15, the day of the attempted assassination
Court records revealed on Monday that Routh left a handwritten letter telling others he would offer $150,000 if they kill Trump while stating the former president is “unfit to be anything.”
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