By Don Schmitz
Almost inevitably, an assassin tried to kill the front-running presidential candidate Donald Trump, who turned to read from a screen milliseconds before the rifle round which grazed him would have splattered his brains across the stage.Such a scene would have thrilled the sadistic fantasies of comedian Kathy Griffin; you remember her, she took a video in 2017 holding up a mock-severed head of President Trump dripping fake blood. Ah, those celebrities.
Mickey Rourke wanted to beat Trump with a bat, Madonna fantasized about blowing up the White House, and actor/chef Anthony Bourdain said he would like to serve Trump the poison hemlock. Entertainers aside, our media has fed the fire, not just on the opinion page, but the front page. In 2016, five Washington Post writers explicitly compared Trump to Hitler.
Last January, The New Yorker on its cover page featured a cartoon of Trump goose-stepping with a Nazi salute. Weeks ago, the LA Times published an election-season news report headlined “Trump and GOP repeatedly echo Nazi and far-right ideology as they aim to retake White House.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow commented on Trump’s planned camps to round up and deport the millions of illegal aliens Biden has allowed into the country, stating, “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”
Sadly, many elected Democrats have also incessantly compared Trump and Republicans to Hitler and Nazis. When rioters during the Antifa/BLM riots in 2020 repeatedly tried to burn down the federal courthouse in Portland, Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to protect the building. Nancy Pelosi replied, “The use of stormtroopers under the guise of law and order is a tactic that is not appropriate to our country in any way.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened the border detention facilities (which were originally created under President Barack Obama) as “Nazi concentration camps.” Predictably, this election cycle has brought everything to a rolling boil. In Biden’s creepy speech under red lights at Independence Hall in 2022, which was beyond divisive and polarizing, he called MAGA Republicans fascists, and accused them of trying to tear down democracy. Bernie Sanders, and many Democrats, have stated that if Trump wins, it will be the end of democracy.
Remember when radical leftist James Hodgkinson ambushed a group of Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice in 2017, stating he wanted to kill as many Republicans as he could? Calls went out at that time for Democrats to tone down the rhetoric, but to no avail. America has been experiencing increasing levels of political violence, starting with the riots in 2016 when Trump was elected, the baseball field shootings in 2017, the Antifa/BLM riots in 2020, to the Jan. 6 riot in 2021. Trump also has said many inflammatory things. Both sides are asserting that the other is destroying the country, but whereas the Republicans claim the Democrats policies are disastrous (fair game), Democrats focus on Trump pinning on him the Nazi label, which is insanity. It was righteous for the brave souls who in 16 separate plotstried to assassinate Hitler, and they are today considered heroes. How is it then that anyone is shocked when someone tries to assassinate Trump?
Anecdotally, I have personally heard people say for years they would, without hesitation, murder him, and recently have seen social media posts wishing the gunman had a better aim. In a national address President Biden urged Americans to reject political violence, stating, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence — for any violence. Ever. Period. No exception. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” Wonderful words, but you can’t work for years trying to convince half the country that your political opponent is a fascist tyrant about to destroy the Republic, then act shocked when violence erupts. It’s commensurate to building a large bonfire, then acting surprised when it spreads into the town causing death and destruction.
I think the assassination attempt has shocked most mainstream Democrats along with the rest of us, and I hope we can all agree with House Speaker Mike Johnson who stated, “We’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country. We need leaders of all parties, on both sides, to call that out and make sure that happens so that we can go forward and maintain our free society that we all are blessed to have.”
The MAGA movement is in a rage, believing the left is desperate, having failed to take down their candidate, from the Russian collusion hoax, frivolous impeachments, and partisan lawfare, and that all they have left is to assassinate him. A defiant, bleeding Trump urged them to keep fighting. I pray they fight only with ballots.