The Democrats Have Normalized Political Violence
Death threats, bomb threats, and swatting continue against President Trump and members of his Cabinet.
by David Catron
May 18, 2025, 10:20 PM
President Trump’s return to the White House and his populist agenda constitute an existential threat to a Democratic Party so unpopular with its own voters that it is in danger of going the way of the Whigs. Several recent polls have revealed that only about 1 in 3 Democrats are optimistic about the future of their party. In response to this crisis, their leaders have reverted to their longstanding tradition of inciting political violence. James Comey claims he is “nonaligned” politically, yet his now notorious “8647” Instagram post was all too typical of Democrat calls for the President’s assassination.
If the Democrats were at all sincere when they insist that violence has no place in America, they wouldn’t use so much graphic imagery. Former President Biden told donors, a mere five days before Donald Trump was shot in Pennsylvania, “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” Biden later provided a semi-coherent rationale for using those words during an NBC interview, but the irresponsible rhetoric has never stopped. As recently as three weeks ago, for example, the Democratic governor of Illinois issued a thinly veiled call for violent protests which included this admonition: “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”
This is perfectly consistent with the rhetoric that has been deployed against Trump by Democrats and “Never-Trumpers” since he entered presidential politics in 2015. In October of that year Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, appeared on MSNBC and offered this wisdom: “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.” Even after the first attempt on Trump’s life, former Biden staffer Kate Bedingfield opined on CNN that Democrats should “turn their fire on Donald Trump.” The connection between such imagery and the assassination attempts was not lost on the voters per an NBC poll:
Slightly more than half of respondents, 54%, agreed that “extreme political rhetoric used by some in the media and by political leaders was an important contributor” in the days after a gunman was spotted on the fence line outside Trump’s golf course and arrested after fleeing … While voters have often split along party lines following targeted violence against political figures, Americans are approaching consensus that overheated rhetoric is inspiring the attacks. And they are growing less likely to chalk up incidents to the lone actions of a disturbed attacker.
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https://spectator.org/the-democrats-have-normalized-political-violence/
