Donald Trump and JD Vance are blaming their opponents and critics for the attempts to kill Trump. The former president said comments by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that he’s a threat to democracy inspired the latest attempt on his life. Vance said “ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric” from critics has put Trump at risk.
As Bill pointed out yesterday, Trump’s complaint isn’t supported by evidence. However, Vance’s claim is true, in my opinion. Constant claims that Trump is an existential threat to our system of government, if believed, can certainly cause an unstable person to “save” democracy by gunning for Trump.
But should this risk cause Trump’s critics to stop making inflammatory claims about Trump? It depends.
If those who claim Trump is a serious threat to democracy rationally believe this, then there’s nothing wrong with saying so. Indeed, I would argue that if public figures genuinely and rationally hold this belief, they have an obligation to warn the public of the danger they think Trump poses.
On the other hand, a critic who doesn’t genuinely believe Trump poses a threat to democracy ought not say he does for two reasons. First, a critic ought not say things she doesn’t believe. Second, she certainly shouldn’t do this if her claim puts an opponent’s life in danger.
Do the public figures who insist Trump poses a serious threat to democracy really believe this? I have no way of knowing.
My guess is that, by and large, those who make this claim are simply parroting an agreed upon talking point without regard to its validity — and not for the first time. Experience tells us that Trump’s critics will make ridiculous and inflammatory claims in order to bring him down. For years some insisted that Trump collaborated with Vladimir Putin.
For Trump’s opponents, including those in the media, the test for making inflammatory claims about Trump isn’t whether they are true or whether they believe them. The test is their utility — whether such claims will help defeat Trump. (Shades, here, of Richard Rorty’s pragmatic view that truth is whatever is most convenient for society.)
Now, let’s consider the other side of the equation. Has Trump made claims about Harris that put her at risk? In other words, could some of what Trump has said about Harris cause an unstable person to go gunning for her?
The answer, I think, is yes. During the presidential debate last week Trump said of Harris, “she has destroyed our country with policy that's insane, almost policy that you'd say they have to hate our country.” Trump reiterated this contention when he declared that Harris and Biden have “destroyed the fabric of our country.” An unstable person might decide to kill Harris to prevent her from “destroying our country.”
During the debate, Trump also said that Harris “hates Israel.” A deranged supporter of Israel might try to kill her for that reason.
And, come to think of it, a deranged supporter of Trump might try to kill Harris if he believes Trump’s claim that her rhetoric caused one or more attempt on his life.
Trump should not make such claims unless he believes them.
Does he? This is a recurrent and perplexing question when it comes to Trump. It was posed most acutely after the 2020 election. Did Trump really believe he won it? Did he really believe he won it by a landslide?
Addressing questions like these calls on us to ask how Trump forms a belief as to whether such propositions are true. My hunch is that Trump determines what to believe based on a purely pragmatic test — whether it serves his interest and/or reinforces his self-image to believe it. If it does, Trump might well genuinely believe a claim. However, his test does not provide a rational basis for holding the belief.
This test is similar to what I take to be the Democrats’ pragmatic test for making a claim against Trump — whether making it serves their interest in undermining Trump.
If there’s a difference, it’s an inconsequential but perhaps interesting one. Democrats say things helpful to their cause whether they believe them or not. Trump believes things that are helpful to him whether they are true or not.
Let’s return, though, to the matter of assassination attempts. Conservatives point out that, whatever one thinks about Trump’s rhetoric, only Republicans are being targeted for death. Vance notes that there have been two attempts on Trump’s life this summer and none on Harris’. But obviously, no conclusion can be drawn from a sample size of two.
If we increase the sample size, we find a mixed bag. We can add to the list leftists who shoot conservatives the Steve Scalise attacker and Floyd Corkins, the guy who attacked the Conservative Research Council. On the other hand, the guy who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband reportedly was a Trump supporter incensed because he thought Democrats stole the 2020 election. The guy who shot Gabby Giffords seems to have been a bipartisan hater.
I’m unable to conclude that unstable leftists are more likely than unstable people on the other side of the spectrum to go after politicians they hate in response to inflammatory rhetoric. It doesn’t matter, though.
Claims about stolen elections and liberal polices that are “destroying our country” present a risk of violence against Democrats. Claims that Trump is a Russian collaborator or an existential threat to democracy present a risk of violence against Trump. We don’t need to compare the magnitude of the risk — a speculative matter, in any case.
People shouldn’t make such claims unless they genuinely believe them and have a rational basis for their belief.
I don't think a good faith belief that Trump is a threat to democracy is defensible if, as I believe, it is demonstrably false. Those holding this belief use Trump's antics as a loser to foretell his actions as a winner. There's no grounds for this position. Au contraire, if we judge the future by the past. When Trump was president inflation was subdued, mortgage rates made housing affordable, minority groups enjoyed their best employment ever, the southern border was secure, the Russian pipeline was shut down while the Canadian pipeline was greenlighted, the delivery of liquified gas to Europe was not shut down, we didn't bug out of Afghanistan in a way that marooned citizens and friends by the tens of thousands and probably induced Putin to invade Ukraine, we had the Abraham accords rather than war in the Middle East, the president did not indict Hillary Clinton or otherwise use the justice system or social media to punish opponents or interfere with an election, to name a few things. Nothing here that smacks of threat to democracy. Jim Dueholm
Paul, I love reading your columns, and your lawyerly analysis. But II think this is a very near-sighted analysis.
There is no reasonable comparison between Trump's expressions of outrage and the declaration of Biden, Harris, Schumer, Pelosi, AOC, Goldman, Waters, et al.
Let me give you a literary analogy to think about: Trump = Goldstein. Trump is the most dehumanized character in American politics since, perhaps, Richard Nixon. Orwell's creation of the Goldstein character was meant to reveal how fascist regimes need to dehumanize their enemies to distract the population from an unjust state. With Trump, the left has created its own Goldstein, paired with their own J6 Reichstag Fire, drilled home with two minutes of hate conducted every 24 hours on MSNBC, CNN and Morning Joe.
The sheer volume of Trump=Hitler, Trump is an existential threat, etc., on every major media outlet, by supposedly reputable anchors, by activists, and on social media by influencers dwarfs the sum total of Trump's negative comments towards Harris and Biden as the sun does the moon.
Have you forgotten Kathy Griffin broadcasting a bloody Trump head from a fake decapitation?
Have you forgotten Joe Biden's red-lit speech in front of Liberty Hall, seemingly inspired by Leni Riefenstahl, in which he declared not just Trump, but "MAGA Republicans" as a threat to "our democracy®" with US Marines standing guard in the background?
Trump's declaration that Harris's policies are "destroying the country" is not incitement of anything. It was and is nothing more than an expression of outrage and I'm glad he said it. I can pull into a truck stop anywhere from here to Georgia and hear the exact same thing. And he is right: letting 20M unknown and unvetted people stream into the country and launching a project to make them into citizens, igniting the first great inflation since the late 70s, condoning genital mutilation as a form of therapy, teaching school kids that the country was founded on slavery and there is such a thing as "whiteness," etc., is in fact, destroying our country.
Trump didn't say that Biden's supporters are a threat to the country; Biden and the democrats have, over and over again. Hear this: they are talking about me - and you! There is a big difference between outrage and the "othering" (to borrow a humanistic term) of half of the American population as traitors.
I have learned that whenever progressives say "our democracy," they are speaking literally: the "we" is limited to those who run the machinery of the federal government. Our democracy is theirs, not ours - until we defeat them. This is what Elon Musk meant when he said, "The woke mind virus must be eradicated, or nothing else matters."
The only person who stands between progressives and their goal of single-party rule, right now, is Donald Trump. And their rifles are trained on him.