On Heated Rhetoric and Political Assassination

In the wake of the second attempt on Donald Trump's life in as many months some in the media are, astonishingly enough, actually blaming Trump for "overheated rhetoric." This is a bit like blaming a rape victim for dressing too provocatively.

Jim Geraghty had a few thoughts on political rhetoric in today's column:

Donald Trump is, in the eyes of many Democrats, the devil, the root of all evil, and the end of democracy. Some genuinely believe that if Trump is elected, 2024 will be the last free and fair presidential election for many years, and that Trump will “deploy the U.S. military to seize voting machines and rerun elections in swing states.” (That last prediction is from a December 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Liz Cheney, citing the feverish fantasies of retired general Michael Flynn.)

In last week’s debate, Kamala Harris declared, “Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Really? The worst? Pearl Harbor and 9/11 don’t make the cut? Nothing by al-Qaeda or ISIS or even Timothy McVeigh belongs in that ballpark? Don’t get me wrong, what happened on January 6 was appalling and an outrage, and the buck stops with the president. But this is building up Trump into our national Voldemort.

Vice President Harris also warned, during the debate: “The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again.”

That is not accurate, of course. The Supreme Court ruled, “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

Those words “within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” are pretty darn important there. If it isn’t constitutional, the president can’t do it.

Harris continued, “Understand, this is someone who has openly said he would terminate, I’m quoting, terminate the constitution of the United States. That he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies.”

Of course, even if this were an accurate quote (it isn't) and even if he were serious, he'd be unable to do the former and the latter has already been accomplished by the current Biden/Harris administration which has employed the DOJ in an effort to do all it can to get Trump out of the race.

In any case, Harris isn't the only one whose rhetoric about Trump has been incendiary. This two and a half minute montage of Democrats abetting fear, loathing, and violence is pretty sickening:

2.5 minutes of Democrats explicitly calling for using political vioIence.

They own this. pic.twitter.com/vMpVbmJYmc

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 16, 2024

Here's a question: In the last one hundred years, has there ever been an assassination attempt against any left-wing, progressive politician? If not, what does that suggest about our political left?