After years of labeling former President Donald Trump a “threat to democracy,” Democrats now condemn violence and appear stunned that someone has acted on their rhetoric.
Leaders in the Democratic Party have rushed to X, formerly known as Twitter, to denounce Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“There is no room in American democracy for political violence,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., posted on X. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies said, “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.” Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called it a “horrifying incident.” Adam Schiff declared he was “horrified by this apparent assassination attempt.”
“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on X.
But for almost a decade, Biden has been one of the primary proponents of the view that Trump is a “genuine threat to this nation” and “literally a threat to everything America stands for.”
Nearly two years ago, the president addressed the entire nation, expressing strong disdain for his fellow Americans, stating, “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
“He really could become the dictator that he promised to be on day one,” Biden wrote following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the presidential immunity case Trump v. United States.
Now, Biden is feigning surprise at the assassination attempt on the former president and leading presidential candidate. You can’t call someone a threat to democracy and expect no consequences.
Biden, however, is not alone in this hypocrisy.
Schiff has consistently labeled Trump as “the central threat” to our democracy, repeatedly spreading hateful rhetoric about the 45th president.
During Trump’s impeachment trials, Schiff falsely asserted to Americans, “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. … You cannot constrain him.” Schiff claimed voters cannot trust Trump “to do the right thing” “for the sake of our country.”
The California congressman even went so far as to insist on MSNBC that “if Donald Trump becomes president again, that could be the end of our Democratic Republic.”
Thompson, who chaired the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, told his over 100,000 X followers that Trump’s leadership is “tyrannical” and that he is a “wannabe dictator.”
Higher ranking lawmakers such as Jeffries have asserted that Trump was a “tyrant” and “dictator” who “poses the greatest threat to democracy since Nixon.”
Pelosi insinuated that Trump is a “real, present, and urgent” threat to the United States in an op-ed published earlier this year in The Atlantic. “If he were to be president, it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House,” Pelosi said in a 2023 interview. She continued, “[W]e will not be the United States of America.”
When you systematically target Trump and spread such propaganda, you’re inevitably going to see attacks like this, where minds are twisted and individuals believe they’re justified in their actions. They labeled him as Hitler 2.0, a fascist, dictator, and tyrant for over eight years. Then Democrats act surprised and wonder how something like this could happen.
