Second Trump assassination attempt follows years of extreme rhetoric from Dems, Hitler comparisons

The Sunday afternoon assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump marked the second such effort in recent months and follows years of his political opponents likening him to Adolf Hitler and demonizing his supporters as threats to American democracy, raising the question of their culpability in the rise of political violence.

Trump has already pointed the finger at Democrats for raising the political temperature with their rhetoric.

"He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it," Trump told Fox News on Monday, referring to the would-be shooter. "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out."

He also said, "They do it with a combination of rhetoric and lawsuits they wrap me up in. These are the things that dangerous fools, like the shooter, listen to. That  is the rhetoric they listen to, and the same with the first one." 

In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump warned that Democratic rhetoric “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”

Some of Trump’s prominent supporters also have blamed Democrats.

“The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop,” Elon Musk posted, in response to a post from Donald Trump Jr. lamenting that he had to discuss with his kids an assassination attempt on their grandfather for a second time.

On Sunday afternoon, Secret Service agents engaged with a suspect armed with a rifle who was reportedly 400-500 yards away from the former president. Trump, now the GOP presidential nominee, was playing golf at the Trump International Golf Club, in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he lives. He was not harmed in the incident. The suspect fled and was later apprehended. 

Authorities have charged Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii, in connection with the incident. 

Some detail have emerged about Routh including that he ran a website seeking to raise funds and recruit volunteers to fight for Ukraine. Social media posts to which the Associated Press linked show that he backed Trump’s reelection in 2020 but subsequently came to oppose him and support Democratic figures.

Routh’s alleged assassination attempt follows that of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who grazed Trump's right ear with a bullet during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper. 

Democrat responses drew rebuke

Immediately following the attempt Sunday, some prominent Democrats made headlines with their own insensitive or ill-timed social media posts, seeming to belittle the attempt or reiterate their assertion of Trump and the Republican Party’s status as a threat to democracy.

"No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon," Rachel Vindman posted on X, referencing Crooks’ previous assassination attempt. Vindman is the wife of Alexander Vindman, a key witness in the first impeachment of Trump. She deleted her post on Monday, saying it was "flippant & political violence is a serious issue.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, posted shortly after the attempt: “Extreme MAGA Republicans are the party of a national abortion ban and Trump’s Project 2025. We must stop them.” The post resulted in considerable online rebuke.

Whether Routh was directly influenced and-or motivated by Democratic talking points remains the subject of speculation. But a review of his social media activity will almost certainly be part of official reviews of the incident. 

Speaking on the John Solomon Reports podcast, retired FBI Agent Jeff Danik indicated that Routh’s digital activity would likely be the first avenue of investigation for law enforcement in piecing together the events Sunday.

“So the digital footprint is the first place all seasoned detectives look right now for clues in any case," he said. “So that's where they'll be concentrating. They'll be concentrating in the cloud. They've obviously already got his location data off of one of his devices, and location data will be big to see how many times he cased that area."

He also said investigators will look at Routh's online browser history and "all that common sense type stuff will be downloaded and compared and plotted. And they'll have a full picture of this guy fairly quickly from the electronic footprint.”

He declined to speculate on Routh's motivation or influences but said the two Trump assassination attempts have been "downplayed in the media, the mainstream media, there's no question about it."

There’s a history of extreme rhetoric

The Trump campaign appears determined to link Democratic remarks to the assassination attempt and on Monday distributed a press release titled “Democrats' Rhetoric Inspired Another Attempt On President Trump's Life.”

Included in the release were prior statements from Democratic leaders showing that the post-attempt remarks from Jeffries and Vindman were far from isolated incidents and marked the latest such statements from Trump’s political detractors.

The release included a lengthy list of Democratic lawmakers calling Trump and his supporters a “threat to democracy,” warning of a possible “civil war,” calling Trump an “enemy of the United States,” and making other such claims. It also included a list of post-attempt remarks from the media, some of which seemed to blame Trump for the attempt on his life.

And Democrats have for years labeled Trump and his supporters as “threats to democracy” and often likened the former president to Adolf Hitler.

President Joe Biden once used the term “semi-fascism” to describe the MAGA movement around Trump ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

"What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the – I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism," he said in August 2022. 

Biden told supporters just days before the first assassination attempt on the former president, "It's time to put Trump in a bullseye."

Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, once joked during an interview with Ellen DeGeneres about killing Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, or former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 

“If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?” DeGeneres asked, to which Harris responded, “Does one of us have to come out alive?”

In November of 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman, R-N.Y., said that Trump “is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated.” He subsequently apologized for his choice of words and clarified that he did not advocate for political violence.

Comparisons between Trump and Hitler have long been common among the Democrats and have also appeared prominently in media in recent months. 

In one segment from MSNBC, Rachel Maddow stated that Trump was using the “same playbook” as Hitler to convince Americans to give up their democracy.

“Hitler, in 1933, was talking about his designs on America and Hitler described ‘you could get Americans to give up their democracy and to be ready for a fascist takeover’” Maddow said. “This stuff doesn’t change. It’s the same playbook.

“The Republican Party will not save us here. We cannot wait for the Republican Party to wake up. Nothing is going to happen inside the Republican Party other than efforts to get Donald Trump what he wants, which is to get rid of our form of government.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a similar comparison during a 2023 appearance on "The View" television show.

“People would get legitimately elected and then they would try to do away with elections and do away with opposition and do away with a free press,” she said. “And you could see it in countries – well, Hitler was duly elected – and so, all of a sudden, somebody with those tendencies of dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies would be like ‘ok, we’re gonna shut this down, we’re gonna throw these people in jail’ and they didn’t usually telegraph that.”

Former Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, in a recent MSNBC appearance, suggesting that Trump was “more dangerous” than Hitler or Benito Mussolini.

“A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship,” she said. “The difference though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy that he believes in.”

Republicans have had enough

Prominent Republicans  have condemned attempts from legacy media to downplay the attempt or to cast divisive rhetoric and political violence as a “both sides” issue.

Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush, on Monday said on CNN that the repeated attempts against Trump put the left’s rhetoric at the center of the debate.

“They have tried to kill this man twice, OK? He got shot in the ear and this guy was setting up shop outside of a golf course to try to kill him this weekend,” he said. “And I know after something like this happens, it’s very fashionable to talk about rhetoric on both sides. Donald Trump is the target.”

Speaking on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show on Monday evening, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said that “the standard operating procedure of the left is to falsely accuse your political opponents of exactly what it is that you are doing.”

“And so the fact the matter is, it is the left that is purposefully dividing this country," he said. "That's what identity politics is all about … highlight the differences between Americans and then exploit those differences to create political [upheaval] so that you can fill the void and gain more power, gain greater control. That's what the left is doing, and it's despicable and it's dangerous.”