As Donald Trump recovers from an assassination attempt and Republicans head to Milwaukee for his coronation this week, the GOP elite has rallied around a new messaging strategy: emotionally blackmailing Democratic politicians, journalists, Hollywood celebs, and numerous other Trump critics into shutting up about the former president’s openly authoritarian vows and his extreme policy agenda.
Since the deadly shooting at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, prominent conservatives have been working to blame the incident on Trump’s enemies for labeling him a “fascist” and for fanning heated “rhetoric” that, in their telling, caused the would-be assassin to shoot at the former and perhaps future American president. “When the message goes out constantly that the election of Donald Trump would be a threat to democracy and that the Republic would end, it heats up the environment,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Sunday, adding: “It’s simply not true. Everyone needs to turn the rhetoric down.”
[...] “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) wrote Saturday night. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the attack on Trump was “aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”
[...] Saturday’s assassination attempt also does not change the fact that Trump has repeatedly and very publicly endorsed political violence over the years. Trump is calling now for “peace” and “unity,” but he has a lengthy track record of downplaying or excusing the harm done to the victims of pro-Trump violence — to the point that late last year he was onstage mocking House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband after he was brutally attacked by a Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist wielding a hammer.
Trump has frequently promised to pardon the pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. He recently shared a meme demanding a televised military tribunal for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee.