JD Vance says Democrats need to tone down rhetoric, omits part about Trump regularly provoking political violence

JD Vance on Monday he blamed Democrats for a second possible assassination attempt Donald Trump, saying, “The biggest difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last few months, and two people have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last few months.” He added: “I would say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and stop this crap. Someone’s going to get hurt and it’s going to destroy this country.”

Not surprisingly, in his effort to claim that the other side’s rhetoric somehow caused these events, Vance missed a very, very, very important point: that no current or former president in history has done more to encourage violence than Donald Trump. Here are a few examples:

• Supporting attacks on reporters
• Encouraging police officers to bang suspects’ heads against the sides of police cars
• Openly fantasizing about “Second Amendment people” preventing the appointment of liberal judges
• Telling fans about a man who was thrown out of one of his events, “I’d like to punch him in the face”
• Telling a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: “If you see someone about to throw a tomato, just smash them, okay? Really, okay. Just smash them, damn it — I promise I’ll pay for the legal fees, I promise.”
• He reportedly asked why the government couldn’t “just shoot” people protesting the killing of George Floyd
• Whipping his supporters into a frenzy with lies about the 2020 election that lasted for months, leading up to the brutal attack on the Capitol that left multiple people dead — something he refused to do anything about for hours, and then tried to justify the violence — saying, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred election victory is so unceremoniously and cruelly stripped from great patriots who have been treated badly and unfairly for so long. Go home with love and peace. Remember this day forever!”
• Defending his supporters’ decision to chant “hang up” Mike Pence”
• Saying there will be a “bloodbath” if he is not elected in November

But Vance, like many Republicans, has actively ignored this, claiming that simply calling Trump a threat to democracy is somehow an endorsement of violence, which it clearly is not. (On Monday, Vance declared, “Look, we can disagree with each other, we can have discussions, but we can’t tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he gets elected, that’s the end of American democracy.” He didn’t mention that Trump actually called Harris a fascist.)