Mere hours after the shooting that claimed the life of at least one audience member and two others are in critical condition at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday night, Republican Senator J.D. Vance was blaming Democrats and President Biden.
“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.”
In 2016, J.D. Vance’s college roommate says he called Donald Trump “America’s Hitler.”
In 2024, J.D. Vance blamed President Biden’s “rhetoric” for the shooting carried out by someone who appears to have been a registered Republican who three years ago might have donated $15.00 to ActBlue.
J.D. Vance’s Yale law roommate shared an apparent screenshot from his messages in which he claims, and the now Republican Senator’s campaign confirmed, Vance wrote:
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”
Vance also described the Republican Party as “whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people,” and said, “Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect.”
Vance had a lot to say about Trump back then. So much so that the Lincoln Project mocked him by calling him a Never Trumper as he campaigned with Trump:
What’s the difference between JD Vance and his book Hillybilly Elegy?
The book has a spine. pic.twitter.com/PxC7zHRWi1
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 4, 2022
The point of going back in time here is that Vance – sans evidence – immediately and dangerously blamed Democrats due to rhetoric for this shooting before we had any information. But he himself actually said something much worse about Trump, albeit privately, which is a big difference. But what isn’t different is Vance’s rhetoric putting a target on President Biden’s back by blaming him for something he had nothing to do with.
One cannot incite more violence while one is calling out political rhetoric and expect to be taken seriously by anyone except the MAGA base, which is the concern.
Vance’s statement is gaslighting at its finest, as it is the Republican Party that has systemically failed to hold Trump and MAGA politicians accountable for violent rhetoric and this ex-president who incited a deadly attack in an attempted self-coup to stay in power and again refused to denounce political violence in January of this year and at the debate refused to honor the will of the voters — of these actions contribute to an atmosphere of higher temperatures, fear, anger, anxiety, mistrust, and violence.
Kevin Roberts, the leader of the pro-Trump Project 2025, saying there would be “a new American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be” isn’t turning down the temperature.
Calling out Project 2025 for the actual plans it lays out is not incitement; it’s accountability based on facts. A party cannot plot to radically undermine the foundations of the U.S. government after they incited a deadly insurrection when they lost power and expect everyone to ignore it.
The threats being monitored by law enforcement are coming from both sides, but one side is inciting political violence from the top and the other side is citizens reacting to the continuing radicalization of the Republican Party and the rights they’re stealing from Americans. The obvious answer to this problem is for all political leaders to stop inciting violence, but here’s J.D. Vance responded to deadly violence by recklessly inciting more violence.
It’s unknown at this point what grazed Donald Trump’s ear. He says he was shot, but law enforcement briefed the media last night that he’d been hit with glass from his teleprompter. The telepromter appeared unbroken from the audience angle, but law enforcement would have obviously had a better view of the teleprompter from Trump’s point of view.
What can’t be denied is someone got access to a an AR-15 type rifle, climbed up on a rooftop in the wide open area that the Trump campaign chose for the venue, and shot into the crowd. Law enforcement is calling this an attempted assassination of an ex-president.
We also need to pay attention to words versus actions. Republican lawmakers often wear pins of AR-style rifles on the House floor and in December once again blocked efforts by Democrats to pass an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.
President Biden condemned violence in remarks to the public following the shooting, “Look, there is no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick. It’s sick. It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
The President also said earlier in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA that he had been briefed on the shooting and was praying for Trump and his family and all who were at the rally, adding “Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”
The FBI has assumed the lead role in the ongoing investigation and urges anyone with information to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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