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Agence France-Presse

Within hours of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, his Republican supporters in Congress claimed they knew exactly who was responsible: Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
Biden’s campaign “rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Senator J.D. Vance, on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president, alleged shortly after Saturday’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former US leader was wounded and one bystander killed.
Vance’s comments were part of an escalating chorus of Republicans who have pinned the blame on Democrats – even as the Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has yet to identify the shooter’s ideology.
They also heap more fuel onto the fire in a political atmosphere that has long been tense and fiercely polarised.
“Heated rhetoric has come from both sides” in recent years, said Michael Bailey, a political-science professor at Georgetown University.

Republicans, for whom gun rights and a rejection of alleged government overreach are key themes, “have been more prone to marry such rhetoric with imagery related to guns”, Bailey noted.
“And some of them (including Trump) did not cover themselves in glory when they made light of the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband,” he said, referring to the 2022 attack by a conspiracy theorist on the high-profile Democrat’s spouse.
Trump later mocked the Pelosis, and stoked further conspiracy theories around the assault.
Steve Scalise, a Republican who was shot in a 2017 attack on conservative lawmakers by a left-wing activist, has also blamed the left for Saturday’s assassination attempt.
“Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” he said.
“For years, and even today, leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita charged on X.

Biden did recently tell donors that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye”, according to comments put out by his campaign – though he was speaking in the context of focusing the party on beating Trump.
Representative Mike Collins went further on the shooting, stating “Joe Biden sent the orders”, without offering credible evidence.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, offered an escalation of her own, telling her followers “we are in a battle between good and evil” and casting Democrats as “the party of paedophiles” and “violence”.
“The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump,” she said.

Such accusations risk removing “attention from the very welcome, widespread condemnation of the attack”, said Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The heated rhetoric pushed Biden to issue a rare address to the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday in which he called on Americans to “lower the temperature”.
Trump and Biden have spoken to each other after the incident, while Biden’s campaign is temporarily pausing television ads – part of what some on both sides hope is part of a broader national cooling.
“Tensions are high on both sides, and I think we’ve got to tone down the rhetoric,” 60-year-old Trump supporter Martin Kutzler said in downtown Milwaukee, where the Republican convention is set to open Monday.
Right now, I think everybody in America needs to stop. They need to pause
Michael Whately, Republican National Committee chair
Republican National Committee chair Michael Whately meanwhile declined to speculate on the shooting while speaking to Fox News Sunday.
“Right now, I think everybody in America needs to stop. They need to pause,” he said.
Among elected officials, though, the accusations keep coming.
“When the message goes out constantly, that the election of Donald Trump would be a threat to democracy, and that the Republic would end, it heats up the environment,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Depoliticising the shooting, however, is essential, Bailey said.
“In an environment with so many guns … it is possible for heated rhetoric to motivate an unbalanced person on any side.”
In their remarks on Sunday, both Trump and President Biden counselled calm and unity, aiming to lower temperatures.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions,” Biden said in a televised address from the Oval Office in the White House on Sunday.
“We can’t allow this violence to be normalised,” he said. “The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down.”
A grateful Trump was in Milwaukee on Monday to make final preparations for the Republican presidential nomination later this week after narrowly escaping the assassination attempt that he said presented an opportunity to bring the country together.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner on Sunday.
“I want to try to unite our country,” the New York Post reported Trump saying during the same interview, conducted during the flight to Milwaukee. “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
Additional reporting by Reuters


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Protesters hold a ‘Rally Against Trump!’, organised by Philadelphia Democrats, in Pennsylvania last month. Photo: Bloomberg

Police detain a person as supporters of US President Donald Trump protest outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: AFP

US President Joe Biden did recently tell donors it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye” – in the context of focusing his party on beating Trump. Photo: Sopa Images via Zuma Press Wire/dpa

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed the Democratic Party “tried to murder President Trump”. Photo: Getty Images/TNS

What we know about the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump

A 2020 school photo shows Thomas Matthew Crooks, named by the FBI as the person involved in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters

Jason Kolher, who attended the same school as Thomas Matthew Crooks, talks to the media in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage after an assassination attempt at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Photo: AFP

Two FBI investigators scan the roof of AGR International, the building adjacent to the Butler Fairgrounds, from which Matthew Thomas Crooks fired at Trump. Photo: Getty Images via AFP 

Assassination attempt on Donald Trump spotlights security lapses: ‘this cannot happen’

Former president Donald Trump is helped off the stage by Secret Service agents after he was shot at a rally. Photo: AP

Trump gestures as he gets into a vehicle with the assistance of Secret Service personnel after he was shot. Photo: Reuters

Secret Service agents form a human shield around former president Trump after he was shot. Photo: Reuters

Snipers on a roof at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler. Photo: Reuters

How the Trump Pennsylvania rally shooting looked from China

Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump is assisted by security personnel after gunfire rang out during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

The shooting prompted some Chinese internet users to highlight the wide access to firearms and high rate of gun crime in the United States. Photo: AP

Donald Trump hurt in Pennsylvania rally shooting; 1 dead, 2 others critically injured

Republican presidential candidate former president Donald Trump is surrounded by US Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Photo: AP

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United States & Canada

Republicans blame Democrats’ rhetoric for Saturday’s assassination attempt, heaping more fuel onto the fires of fierce polarisation


Republicans blame Democrats’ rhetoric for Saturday’s assassination attempt, heaping more fuel onto the fires of fierce polarisation.
