Donald Trump Blaming Democrats for Apparent Assassination Attempt Is Part of the Problem

Republicans wasted little time blaming Democrats for the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, suggesting—as they did in July—that his opponents were engaging in “irresponsible rhetoric,” as Representative Anna Paulina Luna put it Sunday. “No leader in American history has endured more attacks and remained so strong and resilient,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was at Mar-a-Lago Sunday, the day authorities thwarted an alleged attempt on the former president’s life.

“This rhetoric against President Trump, this narrative that he will be the next dictator, that he is the next Hitler coming, it has got to stop,” Representative Mike Waltz said on Fox News. “Enough is enough.”

It should go without saying that political violence has no place in America, as Kamala Harris and the Democrats were quick to emphasize Sunday. “I am thankful that former President Trump is safe,” the vice president said in a statement. It should also go without saying that words have consequences, and leaders have a responsibility to avoid the kind of dishonest, incendiary rhetoric that can create the conditions for violence—especially in a country with maddeningly easy access to high-powered weapons.

But calling out that rhetoric, as mainstream Democrats have done, is not the same as engaging in it, as Republicans are alleging—and if the temperature of our political climate is to be brought down, it’s important to be clear-eyed about who has been turning it up in the first place. “Violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place,” as the anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger put it. “But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power.”

Indeed, Trump has built his political brand on the dark, hateful rhetoric he accuses his opponents of perpetuating. He has stirred up dangerous animus not only against his political foes (including his own former vice president), but against regular people who don’t have the protections he and other leaders are afforded, like the Haitian immigrants in Ohio—whom he, running mate JD Vance, and the MAGA right have spent demonizing with racist lies in recent days.

“They’re eating the pets,” Trump claimed on the debate stage last week, amplifying a debunked hate meme Vance has championed. (“Don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots,” the Ohio senator posted on X ahead of the debate Tuesday. “Keep the cat memes flowing.”) That’s not true. But Trump has kept on. “They’re destroying [Ohioans’] way of life,” Trump insisted at a Friday rally. The result: fear among the Haitian community in Springfield and beyond, as well as bomb threats in the Ohio city that Trump refused to denounce Saturday. “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats,” he told reporters in Las Vegas. “I know that it’s been taken over by illegal immigrants and that’s a terrible thing that happened.”

Trump’s rhetoric—and that of his running mate, who continued to espouse what he all but acknowledged to be lies about Haitians during a CNN appearance Sunday morning—is beyond the pale, even for a politician who has fashioned a career out of outrage. But Republicans have mostly stayed silent over the matter, or treated it more as a political liability than a threat to a community, or even participated in it: “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” the House GOP posted on X.

The idea here seems to be that Republicans can say anything they want, about anyone they want, and it’s fine. “They’re destroying our country,” Trump charged during last week’s debate, falsely accusing Harris of—among other things—being a communist and supporting the murder of babies. But if Democrats object, they’re being divisive. “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they say about me,” Trump said in the debate, referring to his injury at a rally shooting in July. (The alleged shooter in that Butler incident had donated $15 to a pro-Democratic group in 2021, but was a registered Republican; as of August, investigators still had not determined a motive.) “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump said on Fox News Monday, a day after the second alleged attempt on his life, “when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country.”

“It is called the enemy from within,” Trump added of Harris and President Joe Biden.

The circumstances of Sunday’s incident remained somewhat unclear Monday, as suspect Ryan Wesley Routh made his first court appearance and was charged with two federal gun crimes. The 58-year-old—who reportedly supported Trump in 2016 but subsequently criticized him in social media posts—was taken into custody Sunday after a Secret Service agent saw a firearm sticking through a fence at Trump’s golf course, just ahead of the former president, authorities said. Secret Service “opened fire” on Routh, who fled and was apprehended about 45 miles north of the scene. Like the Butler shooter, Routh had an assault-style weapon. He also had a criminal history, and had reportedly expressed scattered political beliefs online, at one point supporting a Vivek Ramaswamy-Nikki Haley ticket.

“This growing pattern of political violence needs to STOP right now,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. But that didn’t stop other Trump allies from stoking the fire: “No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Elon Musk posted Sunday on the social media site he owns. He deleted the post afterward, claiming it was a “joke” taken out of context, and pointed the finger back at Democrats: “The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats,” he posted Monday, “needs to stop.”