Another chance for Trump to frame Democrats as dangerous has emerged
Trumpworld is eager to have Americans blame his opponents’ rhetoric for assassination attempts — both to nullify their arguments and to cast Trump as a victim.


Attendees chat while they wait for former president Donald Trump to speak at a rally on Friday. (Ronda Churchill for The Washington Post)

Column by Philip Bump
September 16, 2024 at 12:27 p.m. EDT

The day after Secret Service agents confronted an armed man near where Donald Trump was playing golf, the former president told Fox News that the rhetoric of Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame. ... “He believed the rhetoric of [President Joe] Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said of Ryan Wesley Routh, the man arrested after fleeing the Trump International Golf Club on Sunday. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump continued.

And then, seemingly in the same breath, he accused his opponents of posing a threat to the country — the same sort of assertion that he claimed had served as Routh’s motivation. ... “And they are the ones that are destroying the country, both from the inside and out,” Trump said. “These are people that want to destroy our country,” he added later. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”

Trump’s political appeals have never been particularly subtle, and this one isn’t either. It’s dangerous for Democrats to say these things about him, he insists — as he says those things about Democrats. It is an immediate, obvious blend of three things: his interest in making Democrats wary about describing him as a threat to democracy, his effort in presenting himself as a victim (the central theme of his 2024 candidacy) and his interest in portraying Democrats as dangerous and threatening. That these outcomes are not internally consistent is not the sort of thing Trump loses sleep over.

{snip}

By Philip Bump
Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter How To Read This Chart and is the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America.follow on X @pbump