Donald Trump has openly called for violence against his political enemies, but a columnist argued the threat he poses to democracy can't adequately be expressed without sounding like a "shrill" partisan.
The former president suggested last week that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for "treason," and his supporters have previously targeted Trump's enemies with threats and violence. But New York Magazine columnist Eric Levitz said reporters have failed to adequately communicate the depth of his menace.
"The threat that Trump’s cultivation of political violence poses to our democratic life is not hypothetical," Levitz wrote. "It manifested itself in the January 6 insurrection, and in the myriad, psychotic lone wolves who have sought to avenge Trump through acts of domestic terrorism, such as the man who attempted to kidnap Nancy Pelosi (before settling for bashing in her husband’s head) last year."
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) revealed that a Republican congressman had confided that he would have voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 but feared for his family's safety, and he heard the same thing when talking to GOP colleagues during his Senate trial -- which ended in the former president's acquittal along party lines.
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"The moment that an elected official changes their vote on a pressing public matter — not because they fear electoral backlash from their constituents, but because they fear that their party leader will endanger their children’s lives — democracy has been compromised," Levitz wrote.
The mainstream media has covered Trump's multitude of scandals and published numerous op-eds denouncing him, but news outlets are unable to internalize his insults to democracy because they would sound like partisan outfits to those who still support the former president.
"The most salient truth about the 2024 election is that the Republican Party is poised to nominate an authoritarian thug who publishes rationalizations for political violence and promises to abuse presidential authority on a near-daily basis," Levitz wrote. "There is no way for a paper or news channel to appropriately emphasize this reality without sounding like a shrill, dull, Democratic propaganda outlet. So, like the nation writ large, the press comports itself as an amnesiac, or an abusive household committed to keeping up appearances, losing itself in the old routines, in an effortful approximation of normality until it almost forgets what it doesn’t want to know."
