Republican lawmakers and supporters blaming Democrats' criticisms of Donald Trump for the assassination attempt against him have sidestepped a mountain of their own disturbing rhetoric, including calls to "hang Mike Pence," and Trump's praise of violent Jan. 6 rioters.
President Joe Biden's criticism of Trump, calling him a threat to democracy, was blamed by several GOP lawmakers on social media and on Sunday news shows for triggering shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks' assassination attempt against the former president at a Pennsylvania campaign rally Saturday.
Crooks is a registered Republican, according to records, and his motive has not been determined.
Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance claimed that Biden's characterization of Trump as a "fascist" — a term the president has not used — "led directly" to the attempted assassination.
Today is not just some isolated incident.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 14, 2024
The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.
In an interview Sunday on NBC, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson singled out a recent comment by Biden in a phone call with political donors that "it's time to put Trump in the bulls-eye."
He added: "I know that he didn't mean what is being implied there [but] that kind of language on either side should be called out."
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in a post also called the shooting an "assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse."
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) insisted on X that Biden "sent the orders" with the bull's-eye comment, and called for charges to be filed against the president for "inciting an assassination." Collins wrote on X.
Possibly the most disturbing comment among high-profile Democrats was a complaint about Crooks' aim in a since-deleted comment on Facebook by a staffer for Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).
She was quickly fired.
"I was made aware of a post made by a staff member and she is no longer in my employment," Thompson said in a statement.
Notably missing from the Republicans' attacks has been the violent rhetoric of members of their own party, particularly by Trump himself, who has "rejoiced" in violence against others, thereby encouraging it, argues a column in The Atlantic.
Trump has called for a televised "military tribunal" of political enemy Republican Liz Cheney, equating her criticism of him with "treason." He told his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that he wanted U.S. soldiers to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters, Esper has reported.
He also has said that the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserves "death," and called for the "execution" of a staffer who leaked a report, according to a top aide.
He "straight up said [the] staffer who leaked ... should be executed," Trump's White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin told Mediaite last month, adding that there were other incidents when he "talked about executing people."
Trump warned autoworkers earlier this year there would be a " bloodbath" in the nation if he isn't reelected.
He also chuckled in a speech at a 2020 campaign rally about a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — that resulted in lengthy prison sentences for right-wing militia ringleaders — characterizing her as a political enemy, and encouraging chants to "lock her up."
"I guess they say she was threatened, right? And she blamed me," an incredulous Trump told the crowd.
The former president has mocked and downplayed a vicious hammer attack on Paul Pelosi by a Trump-supporting home invader that fractured his skull and landed him in the hospital for weeks. He baselessly indicated in an interview that the attack was somehow fake in a nod to totally debunked claims by Trump supporters that Pelosi was attacked by a gay lover.
Trump criticized wife Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at at a California GOP convention last year, then quipped to laughter: "How's her husband doing, by the way, anybody know?"
Trump has hailed as "patriots" the Jan. 6 rioters who hung a noose outside the Capitol and chanted "hang Mike Pence" inside as they searched for him because the then-vice president refused to toss out electoral votes in Joe Biden's presidential victory.
A short time before the storming of the Capitol, Trump exhorted his supporters in a speech to "fight like hell."
Trump has posted a number of fake videos showing him beating up his enemies and posted one on Truth Social earlier this year of Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a pickup truck.
Biden in remarks in the Oval Office Sunday evening following the assassination attempt called on Americans to "lower the the temperature in our politics."
He added: "In America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box.”
