“Violence has no place in America,” posted Kamala Harris on Sunday, following media reports of the second assassination attempt against former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald J. Trump. In a longer statement, Harris claimed to be “deeply disturbed by the possible assassination attempt of former President Trump,” adding “I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.”
If Harris is so very “disturbed,” she should do her “part” and tell her party to refrain from dangerous pro-violence rhetoric. Since Trump’s election in 2016, Democrats, including Harris’ own campaign, have made a regular habit of calling the leader of the opposition a “threat to our democracy.” Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) menacingly summed up his party’s message in a televised interview with former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psakilast November: Trump, he said, “has to be eliminated.” David Plouffe, a senior advisor to the Harris campaign, is on record saying “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”
Some prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, failed 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, have compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. So have numerous legacy media outlets that lean strongly Democratic. In December, Harris said in a televised interview that they were “right” to do so. In January, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) called Trump “a traitor to the United States of America.” In May, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) falsely accused Trump supporters of preparing for a “civil war.” Biden has further labeled Trump and his supporters a “threat” to “this nation,” “the very soul of this country,” “the very foundations of our republic,” and “everything America stands for.” In a widely publicized private donor call that was leaked just five days before the first assassination attempt against Trump in July, the incumbent president announced that ”It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” a remark Biden later acknowledged to NBC News as a “mistake.”
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As long ago as 2015, Harris supporter Rick Wilson, cofounder of the ethically troubled anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told MSNBC “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.” In August 2020, Harris replied “does one of us have to come out alive?” when asked on Ellen DeGeneres’ television talk show if she would rather be stuck in an elevator with Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions. DeGeneres and the studio audience laughed along with Harris. Last year, House delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) told MSNBC that Trump “needs to be shot.” After the first attempt on Trump’s life, former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told CNN that Democrats should “turn their fire on Donald Trump.”
Democratic calls to violence are not limited to Trump. In June 2017, an angry supporter of radical-Left Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who had publicly posted “Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” opened fire on a congressional baseball game, nearly killing then-House majority whip and current majority leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and wounding five others. In May 2020, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), now Senate majority leader, declared that conservative Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch would “pay the price” if they ruled against abortion rights. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years later, U.S. Marshals arrested an armed suspect outside Kavanaugh’s home who had allegedly written of plans to murder three conservative Justices. In August 2023, another man telephoned a death threat against Chief Justice John Roberts, a crime for which he was later sentenced to 14 months in prison.
The motives of Ryan Wesley Routh, the most recent would-be Trump assassin, remain unknown. But photos of his home include a pick-up truck with a “Biden/Harris” bumper sticker. He also appears to have made 19 donations to ActBlue, a Democratic political action committee, prolifically commented against Trump on social media, and last year wrote a self-published book inviting the government of Iran to assassinate the former president. If Democrats truly place country above party, it is time for them to end their violent rhetoric.
Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
