Democrats’ Trump Smear Has Real-World Consequences

If Democrats didn’t think they would put President Trump in the crosshairs of an assassin the first time, they have no excuse to plead innocence now.

The suspect who hid in the bushes at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club, Ryan Routh, waiting to shoot the former president – an AK-47 rifle at the ready, the serial number erased – was not a 20-year-old with no political credentials, like the first would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks.

Routh, 58, who is now in custody, “frequently posted about politics” on X and other social media sites, had a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck, “and had donated exclusively to Democratic candidates and causes since 2019,” the New York Post reported.

He was even featured in a New York Times article last year highlighting his efforts to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight against Russia in Ukraine.

Willing to fight in Ukraine himself — even if the Ukrainians didn’t want him or his questionable recruits — Routh wanted to be a man of action and was willing to kill for a cause.

But if the cause of democracy in Ukraine was worth killing for, what about the security of democracy right here in America?

Routh took Democrats and progressives who say Trump is a threat to American institutions and the rule of law itself literally and seriously.

“DEMOCRACY is at stake and we cannot lose,” Routh wrote in a tweet to President Biden in April.

You can’t lose if your opponent is dead, and if democracy is in danger, what conclusion can a desperate man of action draw?

Instead of toning down their rhetoric, Trump’s critics have redoubled their intensity after the first assassination attempt.

On July 19, Sen. Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, called Trump an “existential danger to our democracy.”

During last week’s presidential debate, Vice President Harris accused Trump of “attacking the foundations of our democracy.”

Democrats did not spare Trump for asking his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically” on January 6, 2021, when some of them went on the rampage and stormed the Capitol.

Trump’s enemies, however, do not conform to the same standards when their own apocalyptic language prompts a man like Routh to plan political murder.

Democrats have been trying since 2016 to identify Trump with Russian dictator Putin.

A gunman who wants to stop Mr. Putin might well think that killing Trump would save lives if, as Democrats and liberals in the media say, Trump is Mr. Putin’s cat-paw.

No one believes that the man who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Gavrilo Princip, was the single-handed cause of World War I.

The political climate that led to Princip’s violent act could have, and sooner or later would have, inspired someone else to do the same thing.

The current political climate that inspired Routh is encouraging others like him.

The press has been reckless and uncritical of the inflammatory characterizations of Trump that his opponents have used for years.

Listening to Democrats or watching MSNBC, a terrified citizen might think that the country is on the brink of dictatorship, and if there is ever a time to resort to preemptive violence, it must be now.

Democrats who denounce political violence while leading their supporters to believe that freedom will end if Trump wins are not only hypocrites: they are guilty.

Progressives must find ways to argue against Trump without giving ammunition to the paranoid and the impulsive.

Trump’s life is already in danger, but think about what will happen if he wins.

On election night, what will people who are convinced that Trump is a dictator do?

It’s time to turn down the heat, which should have happened after the former president nearly lost his life to an assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.

But little has changed since that horrific incident: Democrats don’t seem to be examining their consciences today either.

The sister-in-law of Democratic nominee for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, Rachel Vindman, the wife of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key figure in the first impeachment attempt against Trump in 2019, tweeted after Routh’s attempted ambush of Trump: “No ears were harmed.”

An audience member, Corey Comperatore, was killed in Butler on July 13, and the Republican candidate nearly died: is that something Democrats like the Vindmans find funny?

Too few of the Republican Party’s most vocal critics take seriously the implications of their own words.

They act as if Trump’s intemperance excuses even greater intemperance on their part.

If Trump goes too far – and he sometimes does – Democrats have a duty not to go further, but to reverse course.

This is not the case, and so Trump remains in the crosshairs of potential assassins.

Creators.com