Vance blames ‘liberals’ for Trump assassination attempts
The assassination attempts on Donald Trump are a consequence of aggressive rhetoric from Democratic Party supporters, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance has claimed.
The US Secret Service confronted a suspected gunman hiding in bushes at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday. The suspect, later named as Ryan Wesley Routh, fled the scene by car but was detained shortly afterwards.
In mid-July, Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet when several shots were fired as the Republican candidate appeared at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. One person in the crowd was killed and several others wounded in the incident, with the gunman being shot dead by the Secret Service.
During a speech at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition dinner in Atlanta on Tuesday, Vance suggested that “the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that… no one has tried to kill [Democratic presidential candidate] Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”
The attempts to assassinate Trump are “pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out,” he insisted.
If tensions continue to mount, “somebody is going to get hurt by it, and it is going to destroy this country… and you think about what an incredible wound it would open up in the US,” the vice-presidential candidate warned.
“I promise I will do my part to tone down the rhetoric. But in particular, the people telling you that Donald Trump needs to be eliminated. You guys need to cut it out, or you are going get somebody hurt,” Vance urged.
Trump made similar comments during an interview on X Spaces on Monday. “There’s a lot of rhetoric going on right now… the Democrats, when they talk about ‘threat to democracy’ and all of this,” the Republican presidential candidate stressed. Speaking about the two suspects in the attempted attacks on his life, the 78-year-old stated that “it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.”
US President Joe Biden, who was replaced by Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in July, said on Monday that he wanted Congress to provide “more help” to the Secret Service in light of recent events. Trump previously confirmed that he had talked on the phone with Biden and Harris following Sunday’s suspected assassination attempt, and that both of them were “nice” to him.
