Former president Donald Trump on Monday blamed the \u201crhetoric\u201d of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the potential assassination attempt he faced Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The suspected gunman] believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,\u201d Trump said in a Fox News interview published Monday morning. \u201cTheir rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country \u2014 both from the inside and out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign did not respond to The Washington Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
The former president echoed the claims again Monday afternoon on his Truth Social platform, writing: \u201cThe Rhetoric, Lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC Debate, and all of the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe\u2019s, then Kamala\u2019s, Political Opponent, ME, has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris and Biden have routinely portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy because of his refusal to accept the 2020 election results and his role in stoking rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the election.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s claims come the day he was scheduled to host a virtual address on Spaces, X\u2019s live audio platform, from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. on the launch of \u201cWorld Liberty Financial,\u201d a cryptocurrency platform. The former president is also expected to appear on Fox News\u2019s \u201cHannity\u201d at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The appearances are the first public event Trump has done since the possible assassination attempt at his golf course on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Police arrested Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old man, on Sunday after he pointed a rifle through a fence around a golf course where Trump was playing, authorities said. The FBI is investigating the episode as an apparent assassination attempt. Trump, who survived an assassination attempt this summer in Pennsylvania, was not harmed in the Florida incident.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not said Routh shot at Trump on the golf course. They have said a Secret Service agent opened fire on Routh after seeing his rifle poking through the fence.<\/p>\n
Routh\u2019s social media activity quickly came under scrutiny. He reportedly wrote on X that \u201cDEMOCRACY is on the ballot\u201d in the November election, a refrain Biden and Harris have used on the campaign trail. Routh also had expressed past support for Trump, suggesting he backed him in 2016 but became disillusioned with him.<\/p>\n
Biden and Harris said Sunday that they were relieved Trump was safe and condemned any kind of political violence. Biden, talking to reporters Monday morning outside the White House, said \u201cthank God\u201d Trump was okay and urged \u201cmore help\u201d for the Secret Service.<\/p>\n
On X, Trump\u2019s son Donald Trump Jr. described having conversations with his young children about the second attempt on Trump life.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo person should ever have to do this in America or anywhere else and yet I had to have that conversation five times again yesterday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After Trump criticized Biden and Harris online and on Fox News, some of his critics noted that he has long spread hateful rhetoric against his political opponents. In a post shared on X, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who was part of a now-defunct House select committee tasked with investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot, pointed to Trump\u2019s political rhetoric as a source of tension.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place,\u201d Kinzinger wrote. \u201cBut MAGA pretending they didn\u2019t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLiterally just accused a group of people of eating our pets,\u201d Kinzinger added, a reference to Trump\u2019s baseless claims that Haitian migrants are eating their neighbors\u2019 cats in Springfield, Ohio.<\/p>\n
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) on X also shared a response to Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s post asking if he has apologized to the grandchildren of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, after he posted a tweet mocking the attack on Pelosi\u2019s husband\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who is also now a Trump critic, said in an X post that two things can be true at the same time: \u201c1. This potential assassination attempt on Donald Trump is horrible and should be strongly condemned by ALL of us.\u201d and \u201c2. There is no politician in America today who spews as much hate or incites as much violence with reckless\/dangerous rhetoric as Donald Trump does.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump on Monday blamed the \u201crhetoric\u201d of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the potential assassination attempt he faced Sunday. \u201c[The suspected gunman] believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,\u201d Trump said in a Fox News interview published Monday morning. \u201cTheir rhetoric is causing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}