Democrats and their allies in the establishment media have increased their rhetoric against former President Donald Trump instead of toning it down amid rising tension following the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life.
Democrats and the media have said for years that Trump should be “eliminated” and “destroyed thoroughly” because he is an “existential threat.”
Trump “is destructive to our democracy … and he has to be eliminated,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said in 2023. “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again,” Harris adviser David Plouffe said in 2016.
Trump is “the greatest national security threat to the United States,” Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly claimed. “There is one existential threat: it’s Donald Trump,” President Joe Biden said. “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump,” said Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project.
Authorities apprehended Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, on Sunday for allegedly attempting to assassinate Trump while he enjoyed a round of golf in South Florida. Routh appeared to be a Trump supporter in 2016 but turned against him by 2020. “Make Americans slaves again,” he posted earlier in 2024. Routh reportedly placed a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on a truck outside his home in Hawaii and donated to Democrats’ fundraising machine.
“DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose,” Routh wrote on X in April:
On Monday, Trump blamed the Biden-Harris administration’s rhetoric for the second assassination attempt against him in just over two months. “He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump told Fox News, commenting on the suspect. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”
“The media is made up of fools that will spew [Democrats’] garbage and spew their sick philosophies and will protect them at all costs, and they can’t believe they get away with it,” Trump continued. “Democrats are totally protected by the media.”
Below are 15 examples of the media and the Democrats continuing to use incendiary rhetoric after Sunday’s assassination attempt:
- “We must stop [Trump],” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
- “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon,” leftist podcaster Rachel Vindman
- “This really seems to be the confluence of two very bad things going on in the Republican Party … the attempts to divide, to enrage the population,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ)
- “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are,” State Rep. Steven Woodrow (D-CO)
- “Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance, continue to make baseless claims…” NBC News’s Lester Holt
- “Do you expect there to be calls from within the Trump campaign to [tone it down]?” MSNBC’s Alex Witt
- “Another chance for Trump to frame Democrats as dangerous has emerged,” Washington Post columnist Phil Bump
- “Vance … incite[s] potential violence with lies,” the Bulwark’s Bill Kristol
- “Was the golf course guy with the gun a migrant?” Democrat commentator Ron Filipkowski
- “Trump and his running mate have spent the past week successfully inciting violence … today they want to present themselves as near-victims of violence,” Atlantic’s David Frum
- “Trump is a threat to democracy, and saying so is not incitement,” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait
- “The former president, Donald Trump, brings a lot of this stuff on himself,” Cincinnati Enquirer
- “Hope in America,” USA Today
- “Golf course incident,” NBC News
- Trump “seizing on assassination attempt,” Bloomberg
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.