Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Monday blamed “ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric” from Donald Trump’s critics for putting the former president at risk after a second apparent assassination attempt in nine weeks.
“I’m not going to say we’re always perfect. I’m not going to say that conservatives always get things exactly right,” Vance said at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition dinner, his first public remarks since a man pointed a rifle toward the golf course where Trump was playing on Sunday.
“But, you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months. And two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple months.”
Vance added: “I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence the left needs to turn down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Somebody is going to get hurt and it’s going to destroy this country.”
The FBI said Trump was the target of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his Florida golf club, nine weeks after the GOP nominee survived an earlier attempt on his life at a rally in rural Pennsylvania.
Authorities say the man suspected in the incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, waited outside the West Palm Beach golf course with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours. They haven’t commented yet on the suspect’s possible motive.
Harris and her Democratic allies have long portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states and his role in egging on the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump himself has frequently used incendiary language, calling opponents and critics threats and enemies who are destroying the country. He’s amplified fake videos of his political rivals, threatened to jail adversaries for “unscrupulous” behavior, vilified immigrants with false stories about Haitian migrants eating pets and labeled the press “enemies” of the people.
Former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who backs Harris, said Trump’s campaign has fanned the flames of dangerous rhetoric since his 2016 run for the White House.
“Look violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place,” Kinzinger said on social media. “But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.”
Vance said most Americans ignore the invective from both sides of the aisle, “but some crazy person is going to take matters into their own hands and actually listen to the crazy rhetoric that you’re putting out there.”
He called for the “reduction of the ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric coming from too many coroners of our politics,” and said he would also work to cool down the heated back-and-forth.
“We can disagree with one another, we can debate one another,” Vance said, “but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected, it’s going to be the end of democracy.”
Vance said he learned of the apparent attempt from Trump about 10 minutes after the incident at his golf club. He said the former president joked to him that he was a “little mad because I was about to make a birdie putt on the sixth hole.”
“That’s the kind of guy that you want to be president of the United States, right?” he told the hundreds of evangelical activists in the Cobb Galleria Centre ballroom. “Who’s fazed by nothing, who is telling jokes afterward.”
About the Author
