Second Trump assassination attempt follows years of extreme rhetoric from Democrats about Hitler comparisons

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Sunday afternoon was the second in recent months, after his political opponents likened him to Adolf Hitler and portrayed his supporters as a threat to American democracy, raising questions about whether they are complicit in the rise in political violence.

Trump blamed Democrats for escalating political tensions with their rhetoric.

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris and acted accordingly.” Trump told Fox News “Their rhetoric is getting shots fired at me when I’m the one who’s going to save the country, and they’re the ones destroying the country from the inside and the outside,” he said Monday, referring to the would-be shooter.

He added, “They do it through a combination of rhetoric and the lawsuits they surround me with. These are the things that dangerous idiots like the hitman listen to. That’s the rhetoric they listen to, and the same goes for the first one.”

Next one Real Social postTrump said the Democrat rhetoric has “taken politics in our country to a whole new level of Hate, Abuse and Mistrust.” Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, bullets are flying and it’s only going to get worse!

Some prominent Trump supporters also blamed Democrats.

“The incitement of hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats must stop.” Elon Musk postedIn response to a post by Donald Trump Jr. expressing his sadness at having to discuss the attempted assassination of their grandfather with his children for the second time.

On Sunday afternoon, Secret Service agents encountered a rifle-wielding suspect reportedly 400 to 500 yards away from the former president. Trump, currently the GOP presidential candidate, was playing golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he lives. He was unharmed. The suspect fled and was later captured.

Authorities accused Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, from Hawaiiregarding the incident.

Some details have emerged about Routh, including that he ran a website aimed at soliciting donations and recruiting volunteers to fight for Ukraine. Social media posts linked to by The Associated Press show that he supported Trump’s re-election in 2020 but later turned against him and supported Democratic figures.

Routh’s alleged assassination attempt follows that of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who grazed Trump’s right ear with a bullet during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Crooks was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper.

Democrats’ reactions met with backlash

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s effort, some prominent Democrats made headlines with insensitive or ill-timed posts on social media, belittling the effort or repeating claims that Trump and the Republican Party are a threat to democracy.

“No ears were harmed. Continue your Sunday afternoon,” Rachel Vindman Published on XReferring to Crooks’ previous assassination attempt. Vindman is the wife of Alexander Vindman, a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment. deleted his post On Monday, he said it was “arrogant and political violence is a serious problem.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem JeffriesShortly after the initiative, he posted the following message: “Extreme MAGA Republicans are the party of a national abortion ban and Trump’s Project 2025. We must stop them.” The post resulted in a significant online backlash.

Whether Routh was directly influenced and/or motivated by Democratic talking points remains a matter of speculation, but scrutiny of his social media activity will almost certainly be part of any official review of the incident.

Speaking on the subject John Solomon Reports Retired FBI Agent Jeff Danik noted that Routh’s digital activities will likely be law enforcement’s first avenue of investigation in piecing together Sunday’s events.

“So the digital footprint is the first place that all experienced detectives look for clues in any case,” he said. “So that’s where they’re going to focus. They’re going to focus in the cloud. They’ve obviously got their location data from one of their devices, and the location data is going to be important to see how many times they’ve searched that area.”

He also said investigators will look at Routh’s online browser history, and “all that common sense stuff will be downloaded, compared and plotted. And they’ll get a pretty complete picture of this guy pretty quickly from his electronic footprint.”

He declined to speculate on Routh’s motivation or influence, but said the two assassination attempts on Trump “have been trivialized in the media, in the mainstream media, there’s no question about that.”

There is a history of extreme rhetoric

The Trump campaign appears determined to tie the Democrats’ statements to the assassination attempt, and on Monday distributed a press release “Democrats’ Rhetoric Inspires Another Attempt on President Trump’s Life”.

The statement said that the statements made by Democratic leaders after the assassination attempt and by Jeffries and Vindman were not isolated incidents and were the latest statements from Trump’s political opponents.

The statement included a long list of Democratic lawmakers who called Trump and his supporters a “threat to democracy,” warned of a possible “civil war,” called Trump an “enemy of the United States,” and made similar claims. It also included a list of statements made after the attempt, some of which appeared to hold Trump responsible for the attempt on his life.

Democrats have for years described Trump and his supporters as a “threat to democracy” and frequently likened the former president to Adolf Hitler.

President Joe Biden once used the term “quasi-fascism” to describe the MAGA movement around Trump ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

“What we’re seeing right now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. Not just Trump, but the whole philosophy that underlies it — I’ll say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” he said In August 2022.

Biden told his supporters: “It’s time to hit Trump right on target,” he said just days before the first assassination attempt on the former president.

Vice President Kamala Harris, currently the Democratic presidential candidate, joked about killing Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence or former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres.

“If you could be stuck in an elevator with President Trump, Mike Pence or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?” DeGeneres asked“Does one of us have to make it out alive?” Harris replied.

Representative in November 2023. Dan GoldmanR-N.Y. said Trump was “destructive to our democracy and must be removed.” He later apologized for his choice of words and clarified that he was not advocating political violence.

Comparisons between Trump and Hitler have long been common among Democrats and have appeared frequently in the media in recent months.

On an MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow said Trump is using the same tactics as Hitler to get Americans to give up on their democracy.

“Hitler was talking about his designs on America in 1933, and Hitler described it as, ‘You can make the Americans give up their democracy and prepare for a fascist takeover.’” Maddow said“These things don’t change. It’s the same playbook.

“The Republican Party is not going to save us here. We can’t wait for the Republican Party to wake up. There’s nothing going on inside the Republican Party except Donald Trump’s efforts to get what he wants, which is to get rid of our form of government.”

Former Foreign Minister Hillary Clinton He made a similar comparison while appearing on the television show “The View” in 2023.

“People would be legitimately elected, and then they would try to eliminate elections, eliminate the opposition, eliminate the free press,” he said. “And you could see that in countries — Hitler had been duly elected — and so, all of a sudden, someone with dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies would say, ‘OK, we’re going to shut this down, we’re going to put these people in jail,’ and they usually didn’t telegraph it.”

Former Missouri Democratic Senator. Claire McCaskillHe recently told MSNBC that Trump is “more dangerous” than Hitler or Benito Mussolini.

“A lot of people have tried to draw parallels between Mussolini and Hitler, and the use of terminology like ‘pests’ and the push by these guys towards autocracy and dictatorship,” he said. “But I think the difference that makes Donald Trump even more dangerous is that he doesn’t have a philosophy that he believes in.”

Republicans, enough is enough

Leading Republicans have condemned attempts by traditional media to trivialize the initiative or portray divisive rhetoric and political violence as a “both sides” issue.

Scott JenningsTrump, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, said on CNN on Monday that the repeated attempts to target Trump were placing the left’s rhetoric at the center of the debate.

“They tried to kill this guy twice, OK? He got shot in the ear, and this guy was setting up shop outside a golf course this weekend to kill him,” he said. “And I know it’s very fashionable on both sides to talk about rhetoric after something like this happens. Donald Trump is a target.”

Speaking on the subject “Just News, No Noise“ “The standard operating procedure of the left is to accuse your political opponents of exactly what you did,” Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said on a television program Monday night.

“And the truth is, the left is the one that deliberately divides this country,” he said. “Identity politics is exactly that… highlighting the differences among Americans and then using those differences to create political (turmoil) so they can fill the vacuum and gain more power, more control. That’s what the left is doing, and it’s disgusting and dangerous.”