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On Sunday, Donald Trump was targeted in an apparent assassination attempt. Less than 24 hours after the alleged would-be shooter was taken into custody, the Republican told Fox News Digital why the suspect targeted him: Ryan Wesley Routh “believed” Democratic rhetoric, Trump argued, about the former president posing a “threat to democracy.”
There were all kinds of problems with the claim, including the disconnect between the message and the messenger: Trump routinely accuses people and entities of being “threats to democracy” — the same phrase he now considers too incendiary to be repeated. The GOP nominee, just over the last few months, has told the public that President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and even The New York Times should all be seen as a “threat to democracy.”
The former president didn’t literally say that “people should stop using the phrase that I use all of the time,” but that seemed to be the gist of his position.
Hours later, his running mate confronted a similar problem. HuffPost reported:
Speaking after another apparent attempt on Trump’s life, [Ohio Sen. JD] Vance called for a “reduction in the ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric.” ... “We cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist, and if he’s elected, it is gonna be the end of American democracy,” he insisted.
One of these days, Vance is going to meet his running mate, and they’ll probably have a fascinating conversation.
“We cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist”? OK, but Trump tells the American people that one candidate is a fascist with surprising regularity.
As recently as July, 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.
The incumbent president, of course, is no longer seeking a second term, but after Biden passed the torch, Trump decided that Harris is a “fascist,” too. In fact, just 11 days before Vance declared, “We cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist,” his running mate told voters that the vice president has embraced “fascism.”
A few days later, Trump went on to insist that Harris is a “radical left Marxist communist fascist.” That was kind of hilarious — that combination of ideologies is literally not possible — and this was a timely reminder that the former president uses words without knowing what they mean, but it was also fresh evidence that Trump loves to throw around the “fascist” label.
In case that weren’t quite enough, a day earlier, the former president wrote on his social media platform that he considers his critics to be “Fascists.” (He continues to capitalize words he finds interesting without regard for grammatical rules.)
Evidently, the Trump campaign believes it’s simply a bridge too far to tell voters that one candidate is a fascist — except when Trump does it, at which point it’s fine.