当前总统唐纳德·特朗普在7月份的一次竞选集会上，他的耳朵被击中，这是他第一次呼吁团结。并没有持续多久。
周日，在佛罗里达高尔夫俱乐部发生第二起明显的暗杀企图后，他采取了截然不同的策略。
不到24小时后，川普将政治暴力归咎于民主党人，他告诉福克斯新闻频道数码，总统乔·拜登和副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯的言论“导致我遭到枪击”，同时还声称他们正在“摧毁这个国家——从里到外。”
他在社交媒体上写道，哈里斯“将我们国家的政治带到了仇恨、虐待和不信任的全新水平。因为这种共产主义左派的说辞，子弹横飞，只会越来越糟!”
他还在没有证据的情况下声称，两起案件中的嫌疑人都是“激进左派”，尽管他们的动机尚未公开确定。(消息人士告诉ABC新闻，调查人员目前正在调查佛罗里达州嫌疑人瑞安·韦斯利·劳斯对特朗普在乌克兰问题上的立场感到沮丧。宾夕法尼亚州集会枪击案中，枪手嫌疑人托马斯·马修·克鲁克斯是一名注册共和党人但也在2021年向一个进步团体捐了一小笔钱。
无论如何，特朗普的竞选搭档万斯(JD Vance)参议员周二在密歇根州的一次竞选活动中，加倍了“指责民主党人”的策略。
万斯说:“我认为，现在是时候对民主党人、媒体和所有十年来一直攻击这个人并试图审查这个人的人说，停止攻击，否则你会害死人的。”
危险言论项目的创始主任苏珊·贝内施(Susan Benesch)表示，特朗普的声明“不可能不放在他无情使用暴力言论的背景下。”
“所以，他是五十步笑百步，”贝内施说。“与此同时，这并不意味着他说他的政治对手将他描述为民主的威胁是错误的。”
哈里斯和拜登谴责了周日的事件，并分享了他们对特朗普安全的宽慰。拜登打电话给特朗普，他们进行了一次“愉快”的交谈，这位前总统告诉ABC新闻。哈里斯说，她也向特朗普报到，并“告诉他我公开说过的话，我说我们国家没有政治暴力的地方。”
哈里斯说:“我们可以也应该进行健康的辩论、讨论和分歧，但不能诉诸暴力来解决这些问题。”。
尽管如此，特朗普的竞选团队还是分享了民主党人的50多条引文，他们认为这些引文导致了第二次暗杀企图。其中大多数包括拜登、哈里斯和其他党内领导人将特朗普描绘成“民主威胁”的言论。
这些声明通常是在议员们讨论特朗普对2020年大选的错误主张、2021年1月6日发生的事情，或者特朗普承诺如果在11月当选将采取政治报复时发表的。
共和党领导人还指出了民主党众议员丹·戈德曼(Dan Goldman)2023年的一篇评论，他说特朗普“破坏了民主”，应该“被消灭”——戈德曼为此道歉，称尽管他认为特朗普应该在选举中被击败，但他“当然不希望伤害他，也不宽恕政治暴力。”
周二，白宫新闻秘书卡琳·让·皮埃尔被问及，鉴于最近的事态发展，拜登总统是否会停止称川普为“对民主的威胁”。让-皮埃尔表示不会，称他有责任“向美国人民坦诚”前总统可能带来的危险。
其他人也注意到了民主党人对特朗普的批评和特朗普更具煽动性(有时显然是错误的)的言论之间的对比选举诚信到移居到他的把…作为目标可能的政治敌人。
在一个更极端的例子中，特朗普似乎为1月6日国会大厦的骚乱者辩护，他们高呼“绞死迈克·彭斯”，他告诉美国广播公司新闻部首席记者乔纳森·卡尔“人民非常愤怒”尽管特朗普已经坚决否认的要求前白宫助手卡西迪·哈钦森说，她在电视上观看袭击发生时，听到川普反复说“hang ”,她没有为这一说法提供进一步的证据。
“他用言辞攻击权力的和平过渡。他用言辞攻击他的对手。从来没有总统这样做过。这不正常，也不民主，”德克萨斯大学政治修辞学历史学家詹妮弗·默西卡说&M大学。
"所以，当民主党人指出这一点时，这些都是真实的事实，对吗?"她告诉ABC新闻。
Benesch的独立研究小组致力于激发暴力的言论，他同意自特朗普进入政界以来，“美国主流政治话语的界限毫无疑问发生了变化”。
“我认为，认识到他和他的支持者不是现在唯一以正常化甚至鼓励暴力的方式说话的人，但他和他的支持者一直在这样做，而且比美国政治舞台上的任何人都要多，这一点非常重要，”贝内施说。
特朗普前白宫助理艾丽莎·法拉·格里芬(Alyssa Farah Griffin)现在是“观点”的共同主持人，他在X上写道，每个人都有“降低温度的责任”，但“特朗普[和]他的盟友说他的对手不应该使用他经常使用的语言:法西斯主义者、内部敌人、寄生虫、叛徒，你不会有一个国家。”
专家们说，特朗普自己的煽动性言论历史在成为一个高度威胁环境，告诉美国广播公司新闻:“这次选举中只有一名候选人被枪击两次，而且不是卡玛拉·哈里斯。”
“暴力来自政治左派，作为民主党候选人，卡玛拉·哈里斯有责任谴责特朗普总统是所谓的民主威胁的虚假煽动性谎言，”竞选发言人卡罗琳·莱维特说。“他不是，她知道。”
Benesch说，降低当前气氛的解决方案是让领导人或有影响力的人令人信服地谴责他们自己政党的语言。但是她对选举前会发生什么没有信心。
“不幸的是，没有人有政治动机谴责自己一方或自己团体中的这种言论，但这就是我们要做的，”她说。“或者是如此严重的暴力，以至于领导者和有影响力的人害怕要求他们自己的支持者低调一些。”
Trump blames Democrats for heated environment despite his own inflammatory rhetoric
When former PresidentDonald Trumpwas shot in the ear at a campaign rally in July, he made an initial pitch for unity. It didn't last long.
And he's taken a decidedly different tack after a second apparent assassination attempt Sunday at his Florida golf club.
Less than 24 hours later, Trump laid blame for the political violence on Democrats, telling Fox News Digital the rhetoric of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was "causing me to be shot at" while also asserting they are "destroying the country -- both from the inside and out."
Harris, he posted on social media, "has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”
He also claimed, without evidence, that the suspects in both cases were "radical left" despite their motives not having been publicly determined. (Investigators are currently examining Florida suspect Ryan Wesley Routh's frustration with Trump's position on Ukraine, sources told ABC News. In the Pennsylvania rally shooting, the suspected gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was aregistered Republicanbut had also made a small donation to a progressive group in 2021.)
Regardless, Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, doubled down on the "blame Democrats" strategy at a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.
"I think that it's time to say to the Democrats, to the media, to everybody that has been attacking this man and trying to censor this man for going on 10 years, cut it out or you're going to get somebody killed," Vance said.
Susan Benesch, founding director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said Trump's statements are "impossible not to put it in the context of his relentless use of violent rhetoric."
"So, he's a pot calling the kettle black," Benesch said. "At the same time, that doesn't mean that it is false when he says his political opponents are describing him as a threat to democracy."
Harris and Biden condemned Sunday's incident and shared their relief that Trump was safe. Biden called Trump and they had a "nice" conversation, the former presidenttold ABC News. Harris said she also checked in with Trump and "told him what I have said publicly, I said there is no place for political violence in our country."
"We can and should have healthy debates and discussion and disagreements, but not resort to violence to resolve those issues," Harris said.
Still, Trump's campaign has shared a list of over 50 quotes from Democrats they suggested lead to the second assassination attempt. Most of them include language from Biden, Harris and other party leaders that cast Trump as a "threat to democracy."
The statements were often made when the lawmakers were discussing Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, what unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, or Trump's pledges to take political retribution if elected in November.
Republican leaders are also pointing to a 2023 comment from Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in which he said Trump was "destructive to democracy" and should be "eliminated" -- which Goldman apologized for, saying while he believed Trump should be defeated in the election he "certainly wish no harm to him and do not condone political violence."
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Tuesday if President Biden would stop calling Trump a "threat to democracy" given recent developments. Jean-Pierre suggested he would not, saying he had a responsibility to "be honest with the American people" about the possible dangers posed by the former president.
Others have also noted a contrast between Democrats' criticism of Trump and Trump's more inflammatory -- and sometimes patently false -- statements on everything fromelection integritytoimmigrationto histargetingof perceived political enemies.
In one more extreme example, Trump appeared to defend the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who were chanting "Hang Mike Pence," telling ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl "the people were very angry." Though Trump hasadamantly denied claimsfrom former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she heard Trump say "hang" repeatedly while watching the attack unfold on television, and she did not provide further evidence for the assertion.
"He has used rhetoric to attack the peaceful transition of power. He has used rhetoric to attack his opposition. No president has ever done that before. It's not normal and it's not democratic," said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University.
"So, when Democrats point that out, those are true facts, right?" she told ABC News.
Benesch, whose independent research team working on rhetoric that inspires violence, agreed there "is no question that the bounds of mainstream American political discourse shifted" since Trump entered politics.
"I think it is really important to recognize that he and his supporters are not the only ones who now speak in ways that normalize or even encourage violence, but he and his supporters have been doing it and are doing it much more than anybody else on the American political scene," Benesch said.
Former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of "The View," wrote on X that everyone has "a duty to take the temperature down" but that it was "simply dishonest for Trump [and] his allies to say his opponents shouldn't use the very language he regularly uses: fascist, enemy within, vermin, traitors, you won't have a country."
The Trump campaign, in response to experts who say his own history of inflammatory rhetoric plays a large role in what's become aheightened threat environment, told ABC News: "Only one candidate in this election has been shot at twice, and it's not Kamala Harris."
"The violence is coming from the political left and it's the responsibility of Kamala Harris, as the Democrat Party nominee, to condemn the false inflammatory lie that President Trump is an alleged threat to democracy," said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. "He is not, and she knows it."
Benesch said the solution to deescalate the current atmosphere would be for leaders or influencers to convincingly condemn their own party's language. But she expressed little confidence that would happen before the election.
"Unfortunately, nobody has a political incentive to denounce such rhetoric on their own side or in their own group, but that's what it's going to take," she said. "Or such severe violence that it frightens leaders and influencers into demanding that their own supporters tone it down."
