About two hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) blamed President Joe Biden.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That speech led directly to the assassination attempt on President Trump,” Vance, The The odds-on favorite To become Trump’s vice president, Wrote in X formerly known as Twitter).
Vance was don’t be alone. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) wrote that “Joe Biden sent orders.” Republican Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) wrote that “Democrats make it happen.” Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Said something similar. did so Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
All of this happened Saturday night, before we knew a thing about the shooter’s identity or motive. Since then, the Secret Service has identified him as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, and we still don’t know much about his motives.
Federal data Looks like he gave it $15 for a progressive PAC in 2021But more recently Pennsylvania Voter Records List him as one Registered Republican. classmate Tell the local news That he was a tortured loner who often wore “hunting” clothes to school. None of this sleuthing proves why he targeted the former president, and so far no one has found any online accounts in Crooks’ name that could help explain his actions.
So we can be confident that none of these assumptions were remotely connected to the incident. Prominent Republicans were evoking a Democratic boogeyman, but openly telling their supporters that Biden and his allies were behind the attack on Trump’s life.
It is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. And it should reflect more broadly on how our political leaders should respond to political violence in our country.
When is it appropriate to blame leaders for violence?
On one level, what Republicans are saying may seem to make sense. Research on political violence suggests that when leaders call for or reject violence, they create a permission structure for their angriest and most confused supporters.
Democrats have used this argument to blame Republicans for political violence in the past. After a shooting at a supermarket in a majority-black neighborhood in Buffalo in 2022, Democrats Rush to blame Republicans who were promoting the idea of a “great replacement” of whites by non-whites. Later that year, Democrats also heatedly blamed it Republicans attack then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi For attacking her husband, Paul Pelosi.
But there is one important difference between that case and the present one: the evidence.
The Buffalo shooter wrote a detailed declaration explaining how Replacement theory inspired his work; He had a purpose It is known on the night of the attack. Democrats in the days following Pelosi’s attack quoted revelation Attacker’s Facebook page and about him expressed opinion to justify their claims.
Currently, there is no evidence linking Biden’s speech to Crooks’ actions.
Such evidence can really come to light. While right-wing political violence is far more common in the contemporary United States, there have been recent examples of violence—most notably in 2017, when an angry left-winger opened fire at the GOP House baseball team’s practice and critically wounded House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA).
But the question is not whether democratic discourse may have played a role in the shooting; That’s not what it actually is. Currently, there is nothing to support the speculation coming from people like Vance.
In this sense, Republican behavior recalls a different – and less defensible – response from Democrats to political violence.
In 2011 when Rep. When Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot, liberals and Democrats rushed to blame the attack. a graphic Published by former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s PAC. The graphic highlighted with a bullseye the names of the Democrats they hoped to defeat. Republicans argued that this was absurd: the bullseye was used to signal that they were electorally “targeting” specific candidates rather than literal violence.
Next proof supported the Republican line. Giffords’ attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, was a mentally ill man who abused substances and had no clear political views. After a brief interaction at a 2007 constitutional meet-and-greet, he became dangerously obsessed with Gifford and planned to kill her for reasons only understandable to him.
Democrats should not have speculated about Republicans’ crimes before they had any evidence to back up their claims. It was irresponsible and politically inflammatory, a case study in how not to respond to an assassination attempt on an elected official under conditions of uncertainty.
Yet Republicans are repeating that mistake now in a much more politically charged time.
Pour gasoline on the fire
In defamation law, truth is an absolute defense: you cannot be held legally responsible for damaging someone’s reputation if what you say is actually true.
The same should be true of Democrats’ rhetoric about Trump. Donald Trump is truly a threat to democracy. He tried to overturn the 2020 election, incited a riot at the US Capitol, and is currently pushing a 2025 policy agenda that could put a dangerous amount of power in his personal hands. Democrats shouldn’t just say; They have an obligation to voters to make this central to their cause.
Indeed, it is the unusual state of American democracy that makes the Republican response to Trump’s shooting so dangerous.
Trump dominates the Republican Party because a critical mass of the party’s base really hates Democrats. They believe the Democratic Party is out to get them and destroy their way of life, and are willing to hand over power to a ruthless demagogue to defeat the Left. A small portion of this base believes this so deeply that they are willing to use actual violence to stop the Democrats.
How else to describe the events of January 6?
At a moment like this, it is dangerous to blame Democrats without evidence for the attempt on Trump’s life. This raises a red flag in front of the most radical Republicans, directing their attention to the target and outlet of their anger.
This will remain true even if there is evidence that Trump’s attacker was a leftist. When your speech carries potentially serious consequences, you have a moral obligation to be especially careful in deploying it. It is wrong to speculate wildly in such a tense situation, even if the speculation is ultimately vindicated by future revelations.
What Vance et al. Being irresponsible. It’s pouring a bucket of gasoline on a campfire and hoping the forest doesn’t catch fire.
