On Monday morning, former President Donald Trump alleged in an interview that criticism of him from Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, was responsible for the latest attempt on his life.
The statement is an apparent spin of a complaint that is often directed toward Trump, as his politically charged vitriol has, at several points over the past decade, incited many of his loyalists to engage in violence, with Trump dubiously denying each time that his words played a role on their decision to do so.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump alleged that his would-be assassin “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.”
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out,” Trump claimed.
The current GOP candidate for president then said that “lawsuits” and criminal trials he’s facing are also causing “dangerous fools” to want to kill him.
Trump made the same allegations in a post on Truth Social, but added that news media were also somehow responsible for the attempt on his life, arguing that ABC News, which hosted a debate earlier this month in which Trump performed poorly, had “taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust” against him.
Trump’s claims are without merit. There is no evidence whatsoever that the man who pointed a gun at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, now identified as Ryan Routh, was motivated by those individuals’ statements or the ABC News debate. In fact, Routh, who never had Trump in his sights and didn’t fire any bullets from his weapon, had previously been a supporter of the former president, voting for him in 2016.
Routh grew disillusioned with Trump starting around 2020. In social media posts, Routh has denied being either a Democratic or Republican voter, although in this year’s presidential race, he expressed support for Republican candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.
Trump is now fundraising off of the assassination attempt. In an email to his supporters, he encouraged them to donate $24 to $3,300, using the same points he made in his interview and Truth Social post and titling the message “NEVER SURRENDER.”
While Trump is demanding that Democrats stop publicly criticizing him, he has refused to denounce violence in Springfield, Ohio, where bomb threats against public infrastructure have become a daily occurrence due to racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city. Trump peddled these falsehoods during the ABC News debate, and has continued pushing them despite city officials repeatedly stating that they are false.
When asked by reporters earlier this week whether he would denounce the bomb threats against the city — which have shut down government buildings and, on Monday, forced two elementary schools in the city to close — Trump refused to do so, opting instead to continue spewing racist lies against Haitians.
“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened,” Trump said, falsely insinuating that Haitians in Springfield are not legal residents in the U.S. and ignoring that they were welcomed by the city around 10 years ago.
Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from the state of Ohio, has vociferously rejected the idea that Trump’s promotion of the lies has resulted in bomb threats. In doing so, Vance seemed to admit that he and Trump knew the stories they have been promulgating weren’t true.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said. (There is no evidence that immigrants in Springfield are creating “suffering” for the community whatsoever.)
Trump’s commentary regarding criticism from Democrats is deeply hypocritical, as Trump is perhaps the politician best known in the country for spewing vitriol against his opponents. During his 2016 presidential campaign, for example, he regularly celebrated during rallies when his followers engaged in violence against protesters, even suggesting that he would pay legal fees for them.
“I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks,” Trump said during one of those rallies. “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”
Most infamously, Trump instigated violence by his followers on January 6, 2021, when Congress was certifying his Electoral College loss to President Joe Biden. During a speech in front of the White House that day, Trump riled up a mob of his loyalists by wrongly telling them the election was “stolen” from them “by emboldened radical left Democrats” and “the fake news media.” He then instructed them not to give up and said that they would “never take back our country with weakness” before urging them to go to the Capitol, where they violently breached the building. For hours after the attack, Trump did not call the mob off, only doing so tepidly at the end of the melee — but still telling his loyalists he “loved” them for their support.
Critics of Trump and political observers condemned Trump for placing blame on Democrats.
“Violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place. But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power,” former GOP Congressman and anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger said on X. “Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) also weighed in on the matter, saying:
Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz obviously have had nothing to do with that kind of incitement. They do not talk about bloodbaths, American carnage, overturning the rule of law or the Constitution, or imprisoning and exacting revenge against their opponents. Only one candidate in this race has been impeached in a bipartisan vote for inciting a violent insurrection against our government.
“Two elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, have been evacuated [Monday] due to threats. It’s the third school day that has been disrupted thanks to Donald Trump and JD Vance pushing lies about Haitian immigrants,” wrote humor columnist Rex Huppke, in serious remarks on social media. “So please spare me your concerns about rhetoric ‘from the left.'”
Trump’s remark blasting Democrats “is a bold accusation from someone whose name is essentially synonymous with incendiary remarks,” political columnist Parker Malloy said.
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