Following an attempt on Donald Trump’s life, key Republican figures wasted no time in attributing blame to what they describe as aggressive rhetoric from Democrats scrutinizing his criminal history, ties to the authoritarian Project 2025, and role in the January 6 insurrection.
Slate political analyst Emily Tankin observed that this concerted effort is less about preventing violence and more about undermining Democrats’ strategy of highlighting Trump’s controversial record before the upcoming elections.
In essence, Tankin noted, it’s a political trap Democrats should avoid if they want success in November.
“This response is a trap. Don’t fall for it,” she wrote.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Don Trump Jr. were quick to leverage social media to support this narrative. Vance stated, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” despite the shooter being a registered Republican. Don Trump Jr. added, “”Don’t tell me they didn’t know exactly what they were doing with this crap,” reinforcing the revised strategy of the Trump campaign.
On Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson placed blame on President Joe Biden for the attack on former President Donald Trump, asserting that Biden’s political attacks contributed to what he described as a “heated political environment.”
Tankin critiqued this approach, asserting, “It aims to silence criticism. The assassination attempt does not erase the former president’s promises to gut the bureaucracy to better bend it to his will and to deploy the military domestically to carry out mass deportations. It does not allow him to escape criticism of his refusal to recognize the results of the 2020 presidential election or his attempt to invalidate votes cast in majority Black cities for Joe Biden.”
She added: “The point is not that Vance and company—in encouraging Trump’s violent language while chastising his political detractors—are hypocritical. They are, but hypocrisy is so common in American politics as to be barely worth noting.
“It’s not just about their hypocrisy,” Tankin emphasized, “the point is that would-be autocrats and their supporters are not bringing about unity or calm, or lowering the political temperature between rival factions, by blaming those who criticize their political programs.”
Read Tankin’s entire column here.
