Rudy Giuliani Message to Democrats: Their rhetoric, especially that of President Joe Biden, was “an invitation to violence.”
“Democrats can get away with murder because they have a two-tiered justice system,” Giuliani told me Monday afternoon outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “They can do the worst things in the world, and no one pays attention. We can make a little mistake, and they go world-class.”
Of course, this is the same Rudy Giuliani who called for “trial by combat” for MAGA supporters ahead of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It’s also the same Giuliani who falsely accused the interim election administrator in Fulton, Georgia, of manipulating ballots in the 2020 election, repeating the same claim Trump made in his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when he called his staffer Ruby Freeman a “voter fraudster.” That claim led a mob of election-verdict skeptics to show up at Freeman’s home on January 6, 2021. Fortunately, the FBI warned her that her safety was at risk, allowing her to flee in time. (Giuliani was convicted of defamation and ordered to pay $148 million in damages to Freeman and her daughter in 2023. In a separate court proceeding, Giuliani was disbarred from practicing law by the New York State Court of Appeals in July.)
But days after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Giuliani appears to be recalling the role he and other Republicans played in fomenting 2020 election fraud that led to the violence on Jan. 6, including the deaths of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and Trump zealot Ashley Babbitt. Giuliani has been known to send a leftist message, including calling Trump a deceiver. Dangers to Democracy or fascist—The incident that led to Trump’s shooting on July 13 was widely shared by the six politicians I spoke with and other Republican convention attendees.
Waverly Woods, an RNC attendee from Virginia Beach, joked that it was as if Biden had pulled the trigger himself. “You can’t kill him because he’s winning,” she said. “You can search his house, you can search his wife’s underwear, you can spy on his campaign, but I think killing him is a little too much.”
Several interviewees pointed to Biden’s call to donors days before the rally shooting, in which he said it was “time to take aim at Trump,” as a prime example of Democrats stoking violence (“According to Giuliani, it was pretty bad”). But several convention attendees argued that Democrats have been stoking violence with their rhetoric for years.
“The guy who shot up that (baseball) stadium in Washington, D.C., was very investigative,” Alabama convention attendee Brian Dawson said of the 2017 shooting that put the then-whip in grave danger. Steve Scalise attends Republican baseball practice session. Dawson said of the shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, “It was a coup of the highest order, and either they put Donald Trump on the roof to shoot him, or there was investigative intent.” Because those are the only two options.
“Whenever there’s political violence, it goes one way. Whenever cities are burning, it’s a group of people. I’ve never seen people wearing hats like this do anything violent,” Dawson added, pointing to his red Make America Great Again hat. “We can say anything, but we’re not doing the same rhetoric or the same constant propaganda that comes out of the left.”
Perhaps Dawson has forgotten the January 6 attack. Or the rally in Ohio last spring where Trump warned there would be “a bloodbath” if he lost in November. Or Trump’s response to a Time magazine question about whether he expected violence after the 2024 election: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends.”
Meanwhile, prominent Republicans argue that Trump, who shouted “fight” after the shooting and once suggested shooting people in the legs to slow down migrants along the southern border, is trying to do Democrats a favor by his example.
“You see what President Trump has done. He has not held anyone accountable,” said former House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. Mother Jones monday. “He’s actually preparing a completely new speech, and he’s talking about uniting the country. I think that’s a very positive step.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate who later supported Trump, says Biden is trying to create division by stoking fear of Trump.
“I’ll take (Biden) at his word that he wants to unite the country and tone down the rhetoric,” Ramaswamy said. “But his entire campaign message has been centered around Donald Trump being an existential threat to American democracy. So (Biden) is either doubling down on what he said was wrong or he’s left with no campaign message.”
“I think it’s right to blame the media, it’s right to blame the Democratic machine,” Ramaswamy added. “But I don’t focus on that. I want us to take the road less traveled, which is to focus on who we are and what we stand for. I think that’s the ideal that unites all Americans. And I think the best way we’re going to save this country is not by demanding that we play by a different standard, that we play by a different standard, but by holding ourselves to the same standard that we expect of our country.”
Hours after this interview, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson took the convention stage and said the Democratic Party was a threat to the country. In a speech that he later said was accidentally added to the RNC teleprompter, Johnson described Democratic policies as a “clear and present danger to America” and said the Democrats were the party of “weaponized government.”
