On Sunday, Donald Trump was targeted in an assassination attempt. Less than 24 hours after the alleged gunman was taken into custody, the Republican told Fox News Digital why the suspect targeted him: Ryan Wesley Routh “believed” Democratic rhetoric, Trump argued, that the former president was a “threat to democracy.”
There were all sorts 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 finds too inflammatory to repeat. The GOP nominee has told the public in recent months that President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and even The New York Times should all be viewed as “threats to democracy.”
The former president did not do that literal saying, “People should stop using the phrase I use all the time,” but that seemed to be the gist of his position.
Hours later, his running mate faced a similar problem. HuffPost reported:
Speaking after another attempt to assassinate Trump, [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 is elected, it will be the end of American democracy,” he maintained.
One day, Vance will meet his running mate and they will likely have a fascinating conversation.
“We can’t tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist”? Okay, 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” while his campaign issued a fundraising appeal stating 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 letter joined months of rhetoric in which Trump has told voters that the United States would likely cease to exist if he lost.
The incumbent president is of course no longer seeking a second term, but after Biden passed the torch, Trump decided that Harris is also a “fascist.” In fact, just 11 days before Vance declared, “We can’t 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 continued to insist that Harris is a “radical left wing Marxist communist fascist.” It was hilarious—that combination of ideologies is literally impossible—and a timely reminder that the former president uses words without knowing what they mean, but it was also further evidence that Trump loves to throw around the label “fascist.”
As if that weren’t enough, the former president wrote on his social media platform a day earlier that he considers his critics “fascists.” (He continues to capitalize words he finds interesting, ignoring grammatical rules.)
Apparently the Trump campaign thinks it’s a step too far to tell voters that one of the candidates is a fascist. Unless Trump does it, then it’s fine.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
