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Eliyahu Gasson | Opinions Editor
It was less than two months ago that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faced an assassination attempt in Butler County, less than 45 miles north of Pittsburgh.
For a few short weeks, the attempt on Trump’s life became a major talking point, with Republicans and Democrats quickly condemning political violence and calling for unity between the parties. Trump supporters were quick to point fingers at Democrats for stoking the shooter.
“The Republican Party District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination,” Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., wrote “Democrats and liberals in the media have called Trump a fascist. They’ve compared him to Hitler. They’ve tried to lock him up … This isn’t some unfortunate incident. This was an assassination attempt by a madman inspired by the rhetoric of the radical left.”
It turns out that Thomas Crooks was a political anomaly. He donated $15 to the left-wing Progressive Turnout Project in 2021 using the service ActBlue, when he was 17-years-old. Later that year, he would register to vote as a Republican.
According to FBI deputy director Paul Abbate, a social media account that was believed to have belonged to Crooks included comments that “appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes.”
Nobody can know exactly what Crooks wanted to achieve by killing Trump.
Crooks “conducted more than 60 searches related to President Biden and former President Trump,” according to FBI Pittsburgh Field Office Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Rojek.
“He looked at any number of events or targets,” Rojek said. “[When] the Trump rally was announced early in July, he became hyper-focused on that specific event and looked at it as a target of opportunity.”
No one can tell if Crooks had a motive. The closest anyone has come is that he was looking for an opportunity to inflict violence at some presidential rally.
Why then do Republicans think that it’s on Democrats to lower the temperature on political discourse?
Republicans cry about Trump’s felony cases. They insist that they are political persecution from the left. They aren’t, Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers of falsification of business records. It was also Donald Trump and his supporters who chanted “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Republicans cry about Trump losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. They continue to push this narrative despite Trump ally after Trump ally testifying in depositions that Trump and his cronies tried to muck up the electoral college with false slates of electors in multiple states. The plan was to have then Vice President Mike Pence count the false certificates rather than the authentic certificates, resulting in a Trump victory.
When Pence refused to go along with the scheme the coup fell apart. This made Trump mad. So he stoked his supporters into storming the U.S. Capitol building. They chanted “hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence,” for about six hours, only leaving when Trump put out a tweet asking his supporters to
“go home in peace.”
Kenneth Chesboro, a Trump campaign legal advisor and mastermind of the false elector scheme, pleaded guilty in Georgia to conspiracy to commit false documents in a plea deal in 2023.
There is no evidence that anyone rigged the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.
Republicans whinge and moan and accuse Democrats of doing things that Republicans are themselves guilty of. It is their side of the political isle that has spoiled honest political discourse. Republicans and people who hold right-wing beliefs are more likely to commit political violence than those on the left.
A 2022 study from the University of Maryland analyzed instances of political violence using two datasets, one covering the years of 1948-2018 and another between the years of 1970-2017.
“Our results are in line with past research showing that conservative ideology … is positively related to violent political behavior,” the study found. “These results support the view that left-wing and right-wing extremists are not equivalent when it comes to the use of violence.”
If it should be the responsibility of any one side to lower the temperature, it should be on conservatives.