Stop Blaming the Attempted Assassination on Heated Anti-Trump Rhetoric

Biden's bullseye comment was no more dangerous than Sarah Palin's crosshairs.

A consensus is swiftly forming among Republican politicians, activists, and media figures that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump can be blamed on the heated, occasionally violent anti-Trump rhetoric deployed by President Joe Biden, leading Democrats, and mainstream media pundits.

This is a deeply cynical and misguided tactic—and Republicans are well aware of it, since they have rightly criticized their political opponents for doing the exact same thing.

"Today is not just some isolated incident," wrote Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Trump's pick  for vice president, on X (formerly Twitter). "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."

Conservative author Ben Shapiro said that likening Trump to Adolf Hitler—an action taken by "nearly everyone on the Left, up to and including the current president"—had increased the likelihood of political violence. Reps. Lauren Boebert (R–Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) blamed anti-Trump rhetoric for the shooting.

"To the media," said Greene. "This is your fault."

Conservatives also specifically faulted Biden for recently promising to "put Trump in a bullseye." Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.) flagged this comment in a recent interview with Anderson Cooper, insisting that such rhetoric has consequences. (Cooper pointed out that Trump had just recently used heated rhetoric, calling Biden a threat "to the survival and existence of our country." Johnson replied that "everybody is prone to overstatement.")

Asserting that Biden's bullseye comment had anything to do with political violence is obviously ridiculous. Moreover, Republicans know that it is ridiculous. In fact, they rightly criticized The New York Times and other media outlets for embracing the preposterous idea that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was morally responsible for the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords. The accusation against her was remarkably similar: The media seized on a map, circulated by her political action committee, that placed target crosshairs over Giffords' district. There is no evidence whatsoever that Giffords' shooter ever saw the map or that he was influenced by Republican rhetoric or even motivated by conservative ideas at all.

It is absolutely fair to call out the double standard. It's true mainstream media wholly embraced the idea that Republicans are to blame for political violence because of things like the crosshairs on the map but said nothing critical about Biden's bullseye comment. But Republicans like Vance aren't calling out that double standard—they are participating in it. They are doing the same thing from the other side: blaming political violence on Democratic rhetoric.

It's true that both parties, their activists, and their acolytes in the media could all benefit the country if they turned down the overheated rhetoric. Routine accusations that such-and-such political leader is a fascist, or Hitler, or a communist, or a dictator are not making things better for anyone. But words do not have some hypnotic power to induce others to commit violence. As always, when a deranged person takes up a gun and attacks someone, we should blame that individual—not other people's words.