Trump tries to close off a chief line of attack: That he’s a danger to democracy

For months, former President Donald Trump and his allies have described a nation facing almost unthinkable darkness.

The United States is “under invasion” from “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists,” Trump told thousands at a rally on Friday in Las Vegas. Babies are being “executed after birth.” America faces the prospect of a “nuclear holocaust.”

Three days later, after facing his second assassination attempt in two months, Trump raised what has become an all-too-common American problem: incendiary political speech. But not his — that of his rivals.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

His remarks amount to a flip of a well-worn political script. For years, Democrats have argued that Trump’s autocratic instincts, his escalating threats to imprison those he sees as foes, his efforts to overturn the last election he lost, and his refusals to commit to accepting the results of the next one, render him a unique threat to America’s founding ideals. Dire warnings of the dangers of another Trump presidency have been accompanied by an incitement to vote, and defeat the former president at the ballot box.

Now, as part of a continued effort to deny Democrats one of their chief lines of attack against him, Trump is seeking to blame his opponents for an increasingly volatile political climate that he himself has helped stoke.

“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.

On Monday, Trump’s campaign circulated quotes from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats calling Trump “a threat” to democracy, fundamental freedoms and the nation. The list included the one perhaps most often cited by Republicans — “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye” — which was said by Biden. The president, after the first attempt on Trump’s life, has said using that language was “a mistake.”

The attack isn’t new. Since the start of the campaign, Trump has argued that Democrats represent the true menace to democracy. He has accused Biden and Harris of weaponizing the legal system against him — Trump has been indicted in four criminal cases and found guilty on 34 counts — to portray those prosecutions as a political persecution.

At the same time, he has stood by his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and has called for those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — an attack that he is accused of inciting — to be released, casting them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

Such methods are part of a signature playbook Trump returns to when he is accused of wrongdoing: He accuses his opponent of the exact same thing.

“He projects. He says, ‘Crazy Nancy’ — he is crazy,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, said at the University of Wisconsin on Monday. “He says, ‘Crooked Hillary’ — he’s crooked. Every adjective he uses is really about himself.”

When Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, called Trump a “puppet” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump fired back: “You’re the puppet.”

After Biden’s campaign called Trump a “lifelong racist,” the former president retorted that it was Biden who was “a very nasty and vicious racist.”

On the campaign trail in recent weeks, Trump has sought to turn a new Democratic line — that Trump and his allies are “weird” — against them. “We’re not weird. They’re weird,” he said at the rally in Las Vegas.

And at the presidential debate last week, Trump responded to a charge that he would “weaponize” the Justice Department by attacking Harris for doing the same.

“They talk about democracy. I’m a ‘threat to democracy.’ They’re the threat to democracy,” he said.

Such harsh attacks paired with an election waged on stakes that both sides say are urgent has helped foment a pervasive political climate of violence.

Threats, harassment and violence have affected lawmakers across the political spectrum — from the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball game to an assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, at their home — along with election workers, judges and other officials. Last month, a Virginia man was charged with posting repeated death threats against Harris on social media in the days after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

About a quarter of sitting presidents have faced serious attempts on their lives, according to Matthew Dallek, a historian at George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies, who is working on a book about failed presidential assassination attempts and political violence in the 20th century.

Yet, what’s particularly unusual about the two attempts on Trump’s life, said Dallek, is that they happened during a heated presidential campaign defined by a debate over the durability of the American project.

“The country feels like it is in danger of breaking down in a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect other attempts on presidents’ lives,” he said. “In the middle of this increasingly charged presidential race we have a debate going on about who is responsible. Who is the real threat to democracy?”

The latest attempt on Trump’s life came as he was golfing at one of his clubs in West Palm Beach, Florida, less than a week after a disappointing debate performance against Harris. On the stage, a visibly angry Trump promoted a false claim, also amplified by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. The accusations have put the town and the Haitian community there on edge, with local Republican officials struggling to calm fears amid a series of bomb threats.

Democrats called on Trump and his allies to stop pushing the falsehoods, with Biden saying the narrative was “simply wrong” and has “no place in America.”

On Monday, Vance used the assassination attempt to deflect from Democratic denunciations over his own role in stoking fear in Springfield, calling on Democrats to tone down their rhetoric toward Trump and Republicans, while also ratcheting up his accusations that they bore responsibility for the two assassination attempts.

Speaking to an association of Black journalists on Tuesday, Harris condemned political violence once again. But she saved her most forceful remarks for a denunciation of Trump’s comments about the immigrants in Ohio, which she called “hateful” and rooted in racist tropes.

“When you are bestowed with a microphone that is that big, there is a profound responsibility that comes with that,” she said. She added, “You cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America engaging in that hateful rhetoric that as usual is designed to divide us as a country.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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