The mainstream media never claimed “both sides” were culpable for the J6 riot, even though the Left had already normalized political violence (BLM/Antifa). But with Saturday’s assassination attempt against President Trump, it’s different:
To dilute their own responsibility, leftist media are asserting that “both sides” are responsible for the act.
My, how even-handed!
Or maybe evil-handed. That’s essentially an incredulous Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction, anyway. As he wrote in a Sunday tweet:
“The leftwing media and Democrat political hacks are actually trying to ‘both sides’ some psychopath attempting to assassinate my father.”
“Just when you think these people can’t get any lower, they always do!!!” he continued (tweet below).
This “balancing of blame” strategy — embraced when the onus can’t be put completely on one’s political opponents — is nothing new. It’s part of the reason why the WWII-era Nazis and fascists were ultimately labeled “right-wing”; leftists had no choice but to accept mass-murdering maniac Joseph Stalin as a leftist, and they didn’t want the 20th-century’s other prolific killers in their camp, too. (Note that while inveighing against Hitler in 1937, Pope Pius XII instinctively identified the National Socialists as “left-wing Nazi extremists.”)
As for the current blame-balancing effort, Breitbart adds perspective while reporting on the Trump, Jr. story. “For years, corporate media and far-left Democrats have compared Donald Trump to Hitler and framed him as a ‘threat to democracy’ and to the American way of life itself,” the site writes. “Democrats have gone on television and called for Trump to be ‘eliminated’ [relevant tweet below, courtesy of Breitbart]. “President Joe Biden himself has repeatedly called Trump a ‘dictator,’ including on the day of the assassination attempt.”
More shocking still was the below June cover image chosen by magazine The New Republic (which, given leftist passions, one might think would change its name to The New Democracy).
Not only does Godwin’s law apparently not apply to the Left, but consider these Hitler comparisons more deeply. A now old and famous question people may ponder is, “If you could go back in time to before Hitler took power, would you kill him?” The consensus is generally yes, as it might save millions of lives. Okay, well, what will certain people think is the appropriate action upon being convinced there’s an ascendant Hitler in our midst?
Is it really surprising that someone finally took a shot at the unfairly maligned Trump?
There also was how the mainstream media took issue with Trump’s post-shooting reaction. To recap, “After a bullet appeared to narrowly miss his head, and with blood pouring from his right ear and smeared across his cheek, Trump took the time to emerge from his Secret Service detail before being whisked away to safety, to show Americans he survived the attempted assassination,” Breitbart reminds us. “Video captured the former president pumping his fist defiantly in the air as he shouted, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’”
This bravery was reminiscent of the 1912 assassination attempt on ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, who also was campaigning to return to the White House. The mainstream media didn’t see it that way, however. They thought it was wrong to yell “fight,” as Breitbart illustrated with examples.
(Pro tip for reporters: Comments a person makes in the very moments after being shot and almost killed get planet-sized latitude.)
Yet most striking is that blame-balancing phenomenon. After all, is there really an equivalence between the Left’s and Right’s rhetoric? Just consider the following statements/actions and then ask: What is the rightist analogue to them? (That is, where do you find conservatives of the same stature saying or doing such things?)
• In a 2019 tweet, ex-CNN host Reza Aslan proclaimed that the “MAGA hat is a KKK hood” and that Trump’s “evil, racist scourge must be eradicated from society” (genocide?).
• Rabble-rousing in 2018, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told a crowd to confront Trump administration officials and staffers in public and, as she later put it on NBC, “harass them” so that they won’t “be able to go to a restaurant … stop at a gas station … [or] shop at a department store.”
• At a 2022 event, Joe Biden said that “MAGA philosophy” is “like semi-fascism.” (Note: Such accusations are routinely hurled by people with little understanding of what fascism is; click here.)
• At the June 27 presidential debate, Biden repeated the “fine people” hoax — which incorrectly holds that Trump had thus characterized Neo-Nazis and white supremacists in 2017 — even though it had been debunked (again) less than a week before the debate.
• At the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, aging singer Madonna told the crowd that she has “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”
• Also in 2017, comedienne Kathy Griffin posted a picture of herself holding a simulacrum of a severed, bloody head of Trump.
Now, again, where is the corresponding behavior on the “other side” from high-profile conservatives? It doesn’t exist.
Moreover, with the exception of Griffin, none of these people were condemned or canceled by other leftists (in the way that Trump did condemn the bad actors in making his “fine people” comment).
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with leveling legitimate criticism. But when media and politicians make untrue, hyperbolic statements designed to demonize the target, in the least it reflects ignorance, incompetence, and prejudice (that is, assuming they believe their rhetoric). When they know they’re lying, however, it’s pure evil. In either case, they are to a degree morally culpable in any violence they help foment.
Lying tongues beget bloody hands.
