It’s not surprising at all A political movement that deifies a convicted criminal and liar who attempted to overturn an election and incited a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol to stay in power said it would exploit the assassination attempt that left an attendee dead at a Donald Trump rally within nanoseconds of the incident. But the sheer brazenness of the effort was shocking. Before the critical details (who was the shooter? why did he do it?) were known, MAGA had been whipping up anti-Trump sentiment to blame President Joe Biden, Democrats, and progressives for the shooting. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), who led the frenzied right-wing response, argued that Biden should be arrested for “inciting an assassination.”
The nonsense continued even after it was revealed that the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican (who reportedly donated $15 to a progressive political action committee in 2021). Right-wing commentator Sean Parnell, who suspended his Senate campaign in Pennsylvania in 2021 after his wife accused him of spousal and child abuse, tweeted to Biden: “This is what happened because of this type of bullshit rhetoric from you and others in your party. It’s disgusting. It has to stop.”
At this point, there was no indication that the shooter had been influenced by the politician’s comments.
J.D. Vance, a bitter Republican senator from Ohio who is seeking to be Trump’s vice presidential nominee and once likened Trump to Hitler, said, “This is not an isolated incident. The core 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 the assassination attempt on President Trump.”
“The rhetoric surrounding him over the last few weeks has been that if he wins, it’s the end of our country, it’s the end of democracy, it’s the last election we’re ever going to have. Things like this have consequences,” GOP consultant Scott Jennings said on CNN.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) was quick to declare Biden “responsible” for the shooting. She then went on to denounce the Democrats for their rhetoric against Trump, retweeting a post from a MAGA activist that explicitly blamed Democrats for the shooting: “The Democrats realized it was too late to change their candidate, and instead they tried to kill our candidate.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene echoed the same vile message: “The Democrats wanted this to happen. They’ve wanted Trump out of office for years, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.” Greene’s comments implied that Democrats were somehow complicit in this assassination attempt.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has joined MAGA in its argument, saying the Biden administration has created an “atmosphere around candidate Trump” that “provoked” the shootings.
The rhetoric from Republicans and MAGA extremists is reckless and outrageous. For years, Trump has been spreading the ugly narrative that Joe Biden and the Democrats are in league with Antifa, black radicals, and communists to destroy the country. Trump has said this thousands of times. In the 2020 and 2024 elections, he shouted that if Biden is elected, “we may not have a country anymore.” He has repeated apocalyptic sermons depicting his political rivals as intent on destroying America. He has portrayed Biden and his allies as an existential threat to America.
And of course Trump has repeatedly incited violence, most notoriously on January 6. But with this shooting, his MAGA allies quickly seized the opportunity for a rubber-glue propaganda campaign that casts the Democratic Party as a real threat to democracy and decency and fabricates a massive distortion. One of Biden’s main attacks on Trump is that he poses a danger to the republic. Now the Trump party has a chance to turn the tables, and they’ve eagerly seized it. Ultimately, the MAGA crowd doesn’t need to win the argument that Biden is a threat to democracy. They just need to use it to muddy the waters and undermine the Democrats’ main argument against Trump.
There was some other ridiculous talk from the right. Conservative commentator Dave Rubin tweeted, “If this idiot is proven to be a member of Antifa, Antifa should be classified as a terrorist organization immediately. In fact, it should have been classified years ago.” And Elon Musk, who has since expressed his full support for Trump, responded, “Absolutely.” When it was eventually revealed that the shooter was a Republican, neither of them called for the GOP to be classified as a terrorist organization (as liberal commentator Keith Olbermann points out).
Like many, Marco Rubio brought God into the equation, claiming that an all-powerful God “protected” Trump.
Naturally, many in X wondered why God did nothing to protect the murdered rally-goers or Abraham Lincoln.
On Sunday morning, Ed Martin, a staunch MAGA supporter who leads the right-wing organization Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and is deputy policy director for the GOP platform committee, posted a bizarre social media post claiming that “big government, big tech, big media and the Democratic Party are trying to rewrite the narrative.” ~ No The shooting was described as an assassination attempt. But every major news network chyron made it clear. Martin was promoting a crazy conspiracy theory about what he called the #Narrative Machine. (Yes, this guy is involved in making Republican policy.)
The attempted assassination of Trump was a horrific event that took one life, and it has had a greater impact on American politics. It has also unleashed a flood of nonsense. The MAGA world has rushed to use the shooting to portray Trump, who essentially condoned political violence by pledging to pardon the January 6th rioters, as a martyr for political violence and to portray the Democrats as the perpetrators of such violence. It is an ugly act, but it is a true reflection of Trump and his MAGA followers’ denial of the reality that black people are white.
The cause of this tragic shooting remains unknown. But one thing is certain: Only one candidate in the 2024 primary incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election and still threatens American democracy. What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, doesn’t change that.
