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Vice presidential hopefuls J.D. Vance and Tim Walz will face off Tuesday night in the first (and only) vice presidential debate. But it likely won’t be a fair fight. In light of Trump’s criticism of Democrats’ inflammatory rhetoric following the second attempt against this life, one of Tuesday’s VP debate moderators rushed to subvert such concerns, blaming Vance and his running mate for inciting unsubstantiated threats of “political violence.”

After Trump narrowly avoided a second assassination attempt at a West Palm Beach golf course on Sept. 15, CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell effectively took to victim-blaming.

“Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for inflaming political rhetoric, but the former President’s own words seem to be increasing the threat of political violence in Springfield, Ohio,” O’Donnell said. “That’s where a false and ugly accusation against Haitians — thousands of whom are legal permanent residents — is impacting everyday life.”

O’Donnell then introduced another CBS reporter who spoke of the alleged bomb threats made against Springfield, Ohio in the wake of Trump and Vance elevating to the national level a conversation about small towns being inundated with migrants.

As it would turn out, all 33 bomb threats were hoaxes, according to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

“Thirty-three threats; 33 hoaxes,” DeWine said last month. “None of these had any validity at all.”

DeWine suggested “foreign actors” were to blame and that some of the threats came “from one particular country,” according to the New York Post. 

But O’Donnell, along with several other self-declared “journalists,” linked the unverified bomb threats in Springfield to Trump and Vance. Such inflammatory rhetoric seems to be used both to justify the most egregious acts of political violence against the former president and, as I previously wrote, “further fan the flame of violence.”

The remarks from O’Donnell were par for the course, with the host having questioned whether the former president “bear[s] some responsibility” for the political temperature while interviewing former Rep. Kevin McCarthy in the aftermath of the first assassination attempt.

O’Donnell’s debate co-moderator Margaret Brennan also criticized Trump within hours of the former president having his ear nearly blown off during the first assassination attempt for having not called on social media “for lowering the temperature … and really trying to signal to his supporters as well not to retaliate or to have any kind of escalation here.”

Notably, the second major act of violence against the former president was an assassination attempt against Trump by a man who espoused left-wing talking points that characterized Trump as a threat to “democracy.”

Brennan has also acted as a mouthpiece for the Harris-Walz campaign. During an August episode of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Brennan suggested Trump launched a “new line of false attack on Vice President Harris,” pointing to a clip in which Trump claims that Kamala “went full communist,” and that she “wants to destroy our country” before he noted “catastrophic inflation.”

“We’ll tell you why that’s wrong and how the voters see the candidates’ handling of the economy in our new CBS News poll,” Brennan said after a clip of Trump making these claims at an August 17 rally played. (This clip was cut off during the episode before showing how the former president went on in that rally to claim that “[a]fter causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls.”)

If the presidential debate last month — and the history of CBS News’ moderators — tell us anything, it’s that Vance can expect to be ambushed in a 3-1 fight just as Trump was.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2