As Biden pleads for country to turn down political rhetoric, GOP lawmakers do the opposite
Republicans were quick to blame Democrats for the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden gave an Oval Office address on July 14 in which he called on Americans to “lower the temperature in our politics” following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“You know, the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down. And we all have a responsibility to do that,” Biden said.
However, a number of Republican lawmakers have not heeded that message.
Immediately following the news that a gunman had opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one attendee and grazing Trump’s ear, Republicans were quick to place blame on Democrats and on Biden himself.
It’s unclear what motivated the alleged assassin, Thomas Crooks, to carry out his attack. Crooks was a registered Republican whom former classmates said had conservative political leanings, according to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
But the same day as Biden’s speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted, “We are in a battle between GOOD and EVIL.
“The Democrats are the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent unborn, violence, and bloody, meaningless, endless wars. They want to lock up their political opponents, and terrorize innocent Americans who would tell the truth about it. The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump,” Greene wrote.
“I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) told a Colorado news station.
“Joe Biden sent the orders,” Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) tweeted the day of the attack, adding in a subsequent tweet, “The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.”
Republicans claim Biden’s campaign message that Trump is a threat to democracy is the kind of rhetoric that led to the assassination attempt.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Sen. J.D. Vance tweeted the day of the shooting. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Trump himself has used explicitly violent language against his opponent and Democrats in general during his reelection campaign, however.
At the presidential debate in June, Trump said if Biden wins, “we probably won’t have a country left anymore, that’s how bad it is.” Trump said at a December rally in Iowa that Biden is “the destroyer of American democracy.”
In March, Trump posted an image on social media of Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck. Witnesses testified before the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that Trump had voiced support for insurrectionists who called for hanging then-Vice President Mike Pence. And when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer by an intruder who was looking for Pelosi herself, Trump made fun of her. “We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, by the way?” Politico reported Trump said at the California Republican Party’s convention in September 2023. “And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house — which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
“What happened Saturday is unacceptable. It should never happen again,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted about the assassination attempt on Trump. “Toward that end, it isn’t ‘politicizing’ the tragedy to point out that no politician has done more to glorify political violence than Donald Trump. That’s just the truth. We shouldn’t be afraid to say it.”
