Politicians making appeals to unity while fearmongering.. both sides do it.. It's at the point where it's
Ho Hum!!
No they don't....not in my lifetime..I don't remember Truman but I remember Eisenhower and the rest of them.
Donald Trump’s Violent Rhetoric: A Catalogue
No American public figure has done more to normalize political violence.
CATHY YOUNG
JUL 17, 2024
FOLLOWING THE JULY 13 ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION of Donald Trump, his supporters—and many anti-anti-Trump commentators—have been wringing their hands about the supposed rhetorical extremism of Democrats and other Trump foes. It’s all a bit rich, though, given that violent, fearmongering, and dehumanizing rhetoric has been Trump’s stock in trade over the past decade. This is, after all, the man who started his presidential campaign on June 16, 2015 by claiming that the vast majority of immigrants from Mexico, including legal ones, are “bringing drugs [and] crime” or “are rapists”—and who recently accused Joe Biden of “running a Gestapo administration.”
At a moment when so many people on the right are smearing any impolite Trump critic as complicit in the assassination attempt, revisiting Trump’s long history of flirtation with verbal violence is in order—if only to keep the record straight.
So, bearing in mind that nothing Trump has said or done excuses or mitigates the horrific acts of his would-be assassin, here’s a list of instances of Trump normalizing, endorsing, promoting, or winking at political and other violence.
November 22, 2015
In a Fox News interview, Trump defends the actions of his supporters who were caught on video shoving, punching, and kicking a protester at a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama after the man interrupted the rally by shouting, “Black lives matter!” According to Trump: “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”
December 22, 2015
At a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump mentions the fact that Vladimir Putin “has killed reporters” and says he is “totally against that” himself: “I hate some of these people, but I’d never kill them.” (This comes on the heels of an earlier controversy in which he seemed to downplay Putin’s murders of journalists and political opponents by saying that “our country does plenty of killing also.”) Pointing at the journalists in the press pen, he repeats, “I hate them. . . . These people, honestly, I’ll be honest, I would never kill them. I would never do that.” And then, after taking a showman’s pause to imply uncertainty or hesitation: “Uh, let’s see, uh? No, I would never do that.”
February 1, 2016
At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump announces that he has been warned about tomato-throwers in the audience: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”
February 22, 2016
Trump reacts to a nonviolent heckler in Las Vegas, Nevada with nostalgia for more violent times: “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. . . . I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell you.”
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