In the aftermath of the assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump, many leading Republicans not only blamed Democrats, but GOP officials also pointed specifically to one Democratic talking point: Describing the former president as a threat to democracy, Republicans said, was simply beyond the pale.
The GOP nominee is apparently thinking along the same lines. Politico reported:
Former President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday that Democrats calling him a “threat to democracy” could have led a 20-year-old gunman to try to assassinate him, though the FBI has not unveiled a motive behind the July 13 shooting. “Such a distressed sick world but you know what could be caused when they call you a threat to democracy,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in North Carolina.
It might seem like a simple, albeit cheap, line at a campaign rally, but the closer one looks at the rhetoric, the more important it becomes.
Right off the bat, Trump’s interest in “unity” has obviously been thrown out the window. Earlier this week, the former president said he was shot because “the Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me,” and as of Wednesday night, he tried to draw a direct connect between a Democratic talking point and the attempt on his life.
It’s wildly irresponsible to talk this way — investigators still say they don’t know what motivated the shooter — but Trump clearly doesn’t care.
What’s more, it’s tough to take the former president’s complaints about the rhetoric seriously, given his own record. In fact, the week before the shooting in Pennsylvania, Trump described the Biden administration as a “fascist government,” as his campaign operation issued a fundraising appeal asserting as fact that President Joe Biden is “a threat to democracy.”
Two weeks earlier, the former president wrote on his social media platform, “JOE BIDEN IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, AND A THREAT TO THE SURVIVAL AND EXISTENCE OF OUR COUNTRY ITSELF!!!” The hysterical missive dovetailed with months of rhetoric in which Trump has told voters that the United States would likely cease to exist if he loses.
If he thinks it’s dangerous for Democrats to push such criticism, perhaps Trump can explain why he has pushed the same criticism.
Complicating matters, the Republican candidate might not like the Democratic line, but it’s rooted in fact. As we’ve discussed, this is a White House hopeful who has repeatedly raised the prospect of creating a temporary American “dictatorship,” and who has talked about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions.
He’s running on a platform of rejecting election results he doesn’t like, militarized camps, pardons for politically aligned criminals, friendships with foreign authoritarians he holds in high regard, and mass firings of federal bureaucrats who are deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump’s ideological ambitions.
If Trump doesn’t want to be accused of threatening democracy, then he might want to try curtailing his threats to democracy.
Finally, it’s hard not to wonder what Republicans’ internal polling has to say on this. The scope of the pushback against this specific talking point suggests it might be potent.