Democrats, pundits link Trump’s own rhetoric to second attempt on his life: ‘Very big part of the problem’

Democrats and media pundits have linked former President Trump’s rhetoric to the second assassination attempt against him in the last few months and have called on Trump to lower the temperature. 

“This really seems to be the confluence of two very bad things going on in the Republican Party,” Rep. Mickie Sherrill, D-N.J., told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Monday, accusing the GOP of attempting to “divide” and “enrage the population” through “false rumors and misinformation.” 

The former president has blamed the assassination attempt on rhetoric coming from Democrats, specifically President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

CNN commentator Ana Navarro on Tuesday argued that Trump did not “get to be a very big part of the problem and then pretend that it’s just the other people on the other side who caused this.”

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“Quit blaming folks until you decide to take a look at what’s coming out of your mouth,” “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said on Tuesday. She also argued that only Republicans were contributing to violent rhetoric. 

“Let’s stop this both sides stuff because it’s not correct. It is not both sides. It is one clear side, and you can point to many, many reports, you can point to all kinds of stuff that’s been reported, you guys have to, you have to pull it back. This is not us or them. This is you got to stop doing what you’re doing, JD, and what you’re doing Mr. T [Trump], because you are not helping the situation,” Goldberg added. 

The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs joined CNN’s Dana Bash on Tuesday and said, “you have a former president who, yes, has been the target of apparent assassinations twice, but is also an instigator of political violence.”

NBC News’ Lester Holt, just hours after the assassination attempt, said the attempt on Trump’s life followed “fierce rhetoric” from the former president and his running mate, JD Vance. 

“Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance, continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. This weekend, there were new bomb threats in that town,” Holt said.

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Trump and Vance have repeatedly pushed inflammatory claims about Haitian migrants deemed not credible by officials in Springfield, Ohio. Hoax bomb threats coming from overseas inundated Springfield as well, according to Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

MSNBC’s Alex Witt wondered on Sunday if the Trump campaign might issue a call to lower the temperature following the attempt. 

“Do you expect there to be calls from within the Trump campaign to do that? Because he’s going to reach out to his supporters and say let’s take this down,” she said. “We do not know the source of any gunshots or gunshots. We do not know who is responsible for this. The whole thing has yet to be 100 percent confirmed from start to finish, how this all played out. But do you expect to hear anything from the Trump campaign about toning down the rhetoric, toning down the violence, or would that be atypical of the former president?”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker also appeared to link Trump and Vance’s claims about Springfield to the assassination attempt. 

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“And so it goes in 2024. In the space of less than a week, the once and possibly future commander in chief was both a seeming inspiration and an apparent target of the political violence that has increasingly come to shape American politics in the modern era,” Baker wrote. 

“At the heart of today’s eruption of political violence is Mr. Trump, a figure who seems to inspire people to make threats or take actions both for him and against him. He has long favored the language of violence in his political discourse, encouraging supporters to beat up hecklers, threatening to shoot looters and undocumented migrants, mocking a near-fatal attack on the husband of the Democratic House speaker and suggesting that a general he deemed disloyal be executed,” Baker added. 

Baker also joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday to discuss Trump’s past rhetoric; the former president has been criticized for such statements as making light of the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi.

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“What we see in two attempted assassinations of the former president in two months is we’re in a different kind of era, right? It’s not that there hasn’t been political violence, there has, but to see two attempted assassinations in such a short order, obviously it stands out.”

Baker said Trump was not just an “instigator of political violence but a potential target of it.”

In a return to the network as a guest after being fired last year, ex-CNN host Don Lemon said this week that Trump wouldn’t attract sharp rhetoric if he changed his behavior.

“If Donald Trump wants people, wants Kamala Harris and others to stop saying that he is a threat to democracy, then he should stop threatening democracy,” Lemon said.

Others took aim at Trump’s complaints of Democratic rhetoric following the assassination attempt, including CNN’s David Chalian, who argued that Trump was not a “credible messenger” on calling out rhetoric about political violence. 

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The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell declared on CNN that Trump “created this specter of political violence that we all now live under,” adding that it is “his rhetoric that has been creating this environment for the last eight years.” 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.