After Assassination Attempt, Republicans Say It’s Out Of Bounds To Call Donald Trump A Threat To Democracy

High-profile Republicans have immediately blamed Donald Trump’s near-assassination on Democrats calling him a threat to democracy.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Sunday that “when the message goes out constantly that the election of Donald Trump would be a threat to democracy and that the republic would end, it heats up the environment.”

Other Republicans were more explicit. Shortly after the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said on social media that President Joe Biden’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said in his own social media post, “This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”

As of Sunday afternoon, the motives of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old man who tried to shoot Trump, remain unknown. But it’s clear Republicans want to shut down Biden’s core campaign message. Biden has repeatedly called Trump a threat to democracy, citing, among other things, his encouragement of mob rioters who attacked Congress as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. (During their debate last month, Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the coming election if he lost.)

“The choice in this election is simple,” Biden said in June. “Donald Trump will destroy our democracy. I will defend it.”

In a TV ad that Biden’s campaign released earlier this month, a narrator warned that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Trump can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” done during his presidency would allow him to rule like a king if he wins a second term.