| | | Hatred hurts its host in the end
Trump’s belief that he can foment hatred and infect half the country with it— without it boomeranging back on him—reflects a lack of emotional intelligence.
From the beginning, Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric has been spiked with violence. Reciting a list is like shoveling while it’s still snowing, but last week’s second assassination attempt in as many months sparks a flashback. Trump offered to pay the legal bills of anyone who punched his hecklers; suggested peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square be shot; mused that “ Second Amendment people” could take out Hillary Clinton; encouraged a violent mob who would hang Mike Pence, now calling them “patriots” and “hostages”; seriously discussed executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley; and joked about the hammer attack on Speaker Pelosi’s elderly husband. Now we have bomb threats in hospitals and elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio after he and Vance falsely claimed that lawful immigrants there are eating their neighbors’ pets.
From "stand back and stand by" to complimenting " very fine people on both sides" of a Nazi demonstration, Trump’s coded vitriol against judges, prosecutors, poll workers, critics, Democrats and his own former staff has led to multiple death threats, and yet he persists.
Trump habitually projects his own criminal impulses onto his opponents, so it’s not a leap that he’s now blaming Democrats’ rhetoric for the assassination attempts. It is apparently irrelevant that both would-be assassins were Republicans with mental health problems: Crooks was a registered Republican; Routh voted for Trump in 2016 then supported Ramaswamy in the last primary. Both had guns, while Trump himself revoked mental health checks for gun owners.
........
In encouraging hatred of legal immigrants, trans, racial minorities, gays, women and anyone else they can “other,” Trump and Vance know exactly what they are doing. When asked about the bomb threats in Springfield Ohio, Trump doubled down. “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants and that’s a terrible thing … now they’re going through hell.” He omitted the fact he and Vance intentionally created that hell.
Trump's hate-filled rhetoric and its violent consequences | Opinion (msn.com) |
|
