When a political party, its leaders, its spokespersons, its echo chamber in the mainstream media repeat over and over again that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy,” a “fascist,” a wannabe “dictator,” and compare him to Adolf Hitler, what do they expect their followers will do? Someone attempted to assassinate former President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The shooter — who killed at least one person at the rally and critically wounded two others in addition to wounding former President Trump — was recently identified as a 20-year old man from Pennsylvania, Thomas Matthew Crooks. But if the shooter listened to the Democratic Party’s spokespersons in the Biden campaign, on Capitol Hill, or in the media, he could be forgiven for thinking that by killing Trump he was saving our democracy.
[T]he shooter may have thought he was protecting our democracy from an Adolf Hitler-like dictator.
As a sympathetic Vox noted a few weeks ago, “the Democratic Party has a remarkably singular message: Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country.” Democrats.org (the Democratic National Committee) on June 27, 2024, put out a reminder that “Donald ‘Dictator on Day One’ Is an Existential Threat to Our Democracy.”
Democrat lawyer Marc Elias last year wrote that “Donald Trump is plotting to overthrow American democracy.” Elias continued that Trump posed an “existential threat … to democracy,” and he quoted Vice-President Kamala Harris who said: “Years from now, this moment will have passed. And our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and ask us: Where were you when the stakes were so high? They will ask us, what was it like? And we will tell them. We will tell them, not just how we felt. We will tell them what we did.” Elias concluded, “What we must do is nothing less than protect democracy from Donald Trump.”
After the Supreme Court issued its presidential immunity decision, the Democratic National Committee launched a digital ad campaign in Pennsylvania “calling former President Donald Trump ‘the greatest threat to American democracy.”
Ronald Brownstein writing in The Atlantic called Trump’s threat to democracy “systemic.” Earlier this year, President Biden, campaigning in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, said that Trump is “willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”
The Biden-Harris campaign says that “Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.” This past April, the left-wing Nation magazine called Trump a “clear and present danger to our democracy.” Former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called Trump a “great threat to our democracy.” Congressman Adam Schiff has called Trump the “gravest threat to our democracy.” Senator Chuck Schumer recently said a second Trump presidency would pose a threat to our democracy. MSNBC and its guests have called Trump everything from a threat to democracy, a dictator in waiting, and a fascist. Neoconservative Robert Kagan in the Washington Post compared Trump to Julius Caesar, and we all know what happened to Caesar.
That is just a small sample of a drumbeat of rhetoric that feeds into the notion that Trump must be stopped at all costs, by any means. And that is enhanced by another message that has been spouted by the anti-Trumpers: Trump is Hitler. Mike Godwin in the Washington Post says its alright to compare Trump to Hitler. Axios reported that the Biden campaign has compared Trump to Hitler, writing on X that it is not a coincidence that “Trump Parrots Hitler.”
Actor and Trump-hater Robert De Niro compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. Talk-show host Thom Hartmann has written about “Trump’s similarities to Hitler,” and ominously warned that “it could happen here.” MSNBC this past December said, “Donald Trump has truly earned comparisons to Adolf Hitler.” David Lee Preston, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, said it is not wrong to compare Trump to Hitler. And Hillary Clinton on the View, compared Trump to Hitler.
Many of the very same Democrats, media personalities, and anti-Trumpers who have repeatedly spewed this rhetoric have said they are “horrified” by this latest act of violence aimed at Trump. But they are the ones who have created the political environment in which this shooter acted.
Donald Trump is ahead in all of the polls, especially in the crucial battleground states. Democratic lawfare has not succeeded in ending what they call Trump’s “threat to democracy.” President Biden’s poor debate performance improved Trump’s chances of winning in November.
We do not yet know any details about the shooter’s motivations, except that he tried to kill Trump presumably to stop him from becoming president again. In the midst of the dangerous rhetoric noted above, the shooter may have thought he was protecting our democracy from an Adolf Hitler-like dictator. That’s what the president, the Biden-Harris campaign, Democrats in Congress, and their media and celebrity allies have told the American people.
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