After attacking non-right-wing media for not engaging in rampant speculation in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Media Research Center’s next partisan move was to blame Democratic rhetoric for it — again, without knowing the shooter’s motive. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed that right-wing extremist rhetoric was brought up:
Not long after former President Trump was almost assassinated on stage at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart brought never-Trumper Max Boot on as a guest for The Saturday Show and duo proceeded to talk about how political violence was a problem on both sides of the aisle and wanted people to calm down before speaking about it.
“How concerned are you, or should we be, that what we are seeing there on the left side of the screen is something that we are going to see more of?” Capehart asked.
Boot proceed to rant about how America was in “a very dangerous and volatile situation” and how, “We have way too many guns in this country…” “[W]e’re also living in a very polarized partisan climate where you could easily imagine you might have extremists on either side or no side at all, just people who are driven mad by events and engage in horrible acts of violence,” he added.
Of course, then can the bothsidesing of the political violence despite much of the recent attacks coming from the left:
Fondacaro didn’t explain why Trump shouldn’t be held accountable for his own authoritarian-leaning rhetoric. He also glossed over the fact that Boot brought up the most recent episode of right-wing violence in the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, which the MRC desperately tried to spin away at the time.
Alex Christy complained it was pointed out that rhetoric from Trump and his campaign didn’t cool down after the incident:
CBS’s host of Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, joined the network’s breaking coverage of Saturday’s assassination attempt of former President Trump at his Pennsylvania rally, where she was dismayed that a statement from campaign advisor Chris LaCivita might “escalate” Trump’s “us versus the system” rhetoric and that a statement from Trump himself didn’t lower “the temperature” even though once could make a solid case that it did.
When it was pointed out that Trump campaign advisor sent out an inflammatory tweet stating “They tried to keep Trump off the ballot and they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” Christy tried to deflect by lamely writing, “It is worth noting that LaCivta would later delete his post.”
Fondacaro returned to quote his favorite CNN right-winger trying to blame non-right-wingers:
Unfortunately, the liberal media seemed unable to reflect on how things got to the point where former President Trump was nearly assassinated. In the hours following the attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday, CNN Republican commentator Scott Jennings condemned the anti-Trump, doomsaying election rhetoric parroted by the likes of his network, the rest of the liberal media, and Democrats for leading to what happened. But host Wolf Blitzer wanted to play the “both sides” game and blame the victim.
Jennings started out by calling out the “extreme” rhetoric they’ve been using that claimed the country would cease to exist if Trump was elected again; warning that “these things have consequences”:
[…]Blitzer proceeded to whine about Trump had made “very, very strong statements” again Biden and blamed “both sides.” Jennings had to remind him which of the two was in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head:
Reminder: When it was pointed out that right-wing rhetoric likely played a role in the attack on Pelosi’s husband, the MRC went into spin mode and played whataboutism.
Curtis Houck similarly distracted from questions about right-wing rhetoric, going on to whine that one TV guest was given “room to run rampant by concocting some twisted future in which Trump supporters murder anti-Trump protesters outside the upcoming Republican National Convention.” Given what happened to Pelosi’s husband, it is really that “twisted” to ponder?
Tim Graham was upset that people were reminded of right-wing violence in not only of the attack on Pelosi’s husband but also the Capitol riot:
Breaking-news live coverage can get things wrong in the heat of the moment, but there’s no excuse for partisanship to break out. After the assassination of former president Donald Trump on Saturday, I was looking out for talk of the January 6 riot. It happened at about 9:16 on CBS, as anchor Margaret Brennan was talking to Samantha Vinograd, a former Obama official at the Department of Homeland Security (who became a CNN contributor before joining CBS).
Vinograd raised the prospect of “retaliatory violence” based on anger at vicious criticism of Donald Trump, called it “frankly unpatriotic” to tie this, for example, to President Biden who said on July 8 that “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
CBS wasn’t explicitly citing that, they blurred it into blaming “the government.” Vinograd then connected this notion to January 6 and the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi:
Rather than respond to anything Vinograd said, Graham resorted to personal attacks, calling him “an anti-Trump hothead.”
Houck ranted that CBS “Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan had the gall to lecture House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) about rhetoric even though Scalise himself was nearly assassinated in June 2017 by a far-left kook”:
Brennan wasn’t done debasing herself as she twice tried to have Scalise denounce Republican Congressman Mike Collins (R-GA) for having tweeted “Joe Biden sent the orders” in reference to Biden rhetorically stating earlier in the week that Trump had to be “put…in a bullseye”.
She wouldn’t mention that context, of course.
Instead, she demanded Scalise answer whether there was “any information whatsoever to link…the U.S. government to what happened”. Obviously, Scalise said no and vaguely alluded to “comments form Joe Biden” earlier, but said any rampant speculation should “stop immediately”.
The CBS host continued to pummel Scalise about rhetoric demanding he state “that no member should in any way insinuate anything without actually knowing fact first considering we’re in a “very dangerous moment.”
The MRC has previously (and libelously) claimed without evidence that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow “inspired” the shooter of Scalise and others.