I’m in the camp, mostly all alone, that believes the person responsible for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, is the shooter. But the American press corps is pretty damn insistent that other people’s rhetoric and tone matter.
Regarding that, shortly after Donald Trump’s near miss with death, Jamie Gangel of CNN lamented he had not, thirty seconds after he got shot, told the crowd to temper thei rhetoric. That is what she said she wished he’d done instead of thrusting his fist in the air and saying “Fight” in the seconds after getting shot.
Margeret Brennan on CBS News lamented that, in the aftermath of the shooting and Trump’s first statement on Truth Social, he didn’t call to temper the rhetoric.
Yesterday, on This Week on ABC, George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz lamented Trump’s rhetoric on January 6th and Republican behavior.
That the American press corps — the journalists and reporters, not the pundits — chose to blame the victim for his would-be assassination is very telling, even more so that it was their immediate reaction. That Gangel, at CNN, can see Donald Trump stand up immediately after being shot and wish he began a dissertation on toning down rhetoric is a damning indictment on the press. More troubling is that, if you see the time stamp of when Gangel said it, it was after the FBI had confirmed it was an attempted assassination. So we were way past an “incident” or “Trump falling” to someone who tried to kill him.¹
And the press, afterward, has given little attention to the rhetoric from the left.
Joe Biden has repeatedly said Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. The other day, he told donors he wanted Trump in the bullseye. This is not isolated.
Biden also famously told a black audience that Mitt Romney would put them back in chains and referred to tea party activists as domestic terrorists in 2010.
It is also not just Joe Biden. Last night, after the Trump assassination, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was yet again calling Donald Trump a fascist who needs to be stopped. And here is Montana Senator Jon Tester calling for violence against Donald Trump:
And it is not just the politicians. It is the pundits on the television networks who keep lecturing the right about their tone and rhetoric.
And it is not just the pundits, but the supposed journalists too — the people given the anchor chairs at networks who fret. MSNBC dedicated an entire portion of its broadcasts to “American autocracy,” which included this from Rachel Maddow:
But it is not just the reporters, pundits, journalists, and politicians. It is also the bullets.
Floyd Lee Corkins, an MSNBC viewer, attempted the mass assassination of employees of the Family Research Council, a conservative organization.
James Hodgkinson, an MSNBC viewer, attempted the mass assassination of Republican members of Congress.
Nicholas Roske, an MSNBC viewer, attempted the assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Notably, the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer has already been tried and sent to jail. Roske has still not been prosecuted even though the Department of Justice has charged him with the attempted assassination of a government official.
A 77-year-old in California was attacked for wearing a Make America Great Again cap.
In Chicago, a mob attacked and beat a Trump supporter in 2016.
And now, Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.
The bullets are flying in only one direction, and the press has decided its role is to lecture the side being shot at about the need to watch its tone.
Members of the press — I know you read this. And you are contributing to a very violent situation. That you feel justified in lecturing the right on their temperament and rhetoric and have barely called out Democrats or even your coworkers is making this worse. You’ll lecture Donald Trump and lament his rhetoric and what might happen to you.
But just as so many members of the press have been weak in their calls against leftwing antisemitic protests, so too have members of the press been weak on calling out the violent, shrill rhetoric of Democrats and progressive activists against the right — including from the air of the networks.
The bullets have all been fired by leftwing activists towards Republican targets. Yes, actual bullets, not mean tweets and words — but you all spend way more time handwringing about Republican tone and rhetoric.
Yes, everyone needs to tone it down. Trump is not a threat to democracy. Neither is Biden. But Democrats are the ones who not only insist Trump is a threat to democracy, but our nation is going to end if he gets elected and he is the second coming of Hitler.
When you tie him to Hitler on the covers of your magazines and in the pages of your paper, and people become convinced Joe Biden cannot stop him, do not be surprised when you guys in the press inspire someone to stop Trump. Oh, that just happened.
And your response was to blame the victim. After all, if Trump wins, you guys think democracy ends.
Oh, and it is really hard to take the press seriously when the former President of the United States comes within a literal inch of dying in the first political assassination attempt on a President since Ronald Reagan, and a major newspaper chooses this as its headline.
The bullets are flying in only one direction. And the press spends way more time lecturing those getting shot at than those firing the bullets. Now, I think the shooter is to blame. But if the press thinks rhetoric can incite, maybe they need to be more equitable in applying that belief.
Lastly, the media keeps telling us democracy is under attack. It literally was on Saturday night and one person is dead and three people, including a former President who is a major party candidate, were wounded. The shooter is dead.
In response to this attack on democracy, I have chosen to fight back with a donation to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. The best way to fight back against this attack on democracy is to get Donald Trump elected.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt, some conservatives on social media attacked reporters for not immediately calling it an assassination but instead noting Trump fell or there was an “incident” or a shooting. Actually, we should want the media to be cautious and it is pretty standard protocol to not declare something an assassination attempt until the FBI says it was. The FBI did a few hours later and the media changed their tune. It is actually a good thing the media does not rush to the worst case scenario at times like this. Additionally, it should be noted in the immediate aftermath that both a reporter and an attendee I spoke with said they initially thought it was post-July 4th fireworks being shot until Donald Trump ducked.