Donald J. Trump nearly lost his life again on Sunday. An armed gunman was waiting for him in the bushes. He had a GoPro camera to record it. A Secret Service agent saw the barrel of a gun through a fence and fired at the gunman. The gunman fled and was captured. And now we are slowly learning more about him and his motives.
President Trump is my running mate and a friend, but more importantly, he is a father and grandfather to those who love him dearly, and I wish he could spend more time with his family (and, selfishly, I wish I could spend more time with them, too).
The logic of censorship can only lead to one conclusion, because there is only one way to silence a man permanently – with a bullet to the brain.
I commend President Trump for calling for peace and tranquility. His rhetoric is out of control. A few years ago, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) and other House Republicans were nearly killed at a baseball stadium in Northern Virginia. Donald Trump has been nearly killed twice.
But I do want to say something about Sunday's news and how it revealed the difference between lively debate and violent rhetoric.
Here's what we know so far: Kamala Harris said “democracy is at stake” during her campaign against President Trump. The shooter agreed, using the exact same phrase. He had a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck. He was obsessed with the “fight for democracy” in Ukraine and had absorbed many of the more outlandish views on the Russia-Ukraine war. His name was Ryan Rouse, and he'd donated 19 times to Democratic causes but never to a Republican cause.
How do you think the Democratic Party and its media allies will react when a 19-time Republican donor tries to destroy a Democratic presidential candidate? The question makes sense.
Kamala Harris campaign surrogates have been saying things like “Trump must be removed” for years, so how did their media allies react to the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in as many months?
NBC News called the assassination attempt “the Golf Club Incident.” The Los Angeles Times reported, “Trump Hit with Golf Clubs.” USA Today's top headline on Monday was “Hope for America,” and the paper published an outlandish letter to the editor claiming that “Trump is inviting the assassination attempt himself.” CNN's Dana Bash, bizarrely, accused me of inciting the bomb threats, but on Monday said that the Harris campaign's rhetoric did not motivate Routh, even though Routh clearly repeated the same rhetoric.
A PBS newscast over the weekend perfectly illustrated the double standards of Kamala Harris' media peers. After devoting 30 seconds to the second attempt on President Trump's life, the show focused on the real danger: Trump and me. According to PBS commentators, we are personally responsible for the bomb threats against residents of Springfield, Ohio. Never mind that I have repeatedly condemned those threats. Subsequent reports have suggested that the threats came not from crazed Trump fans, as the media suggested, but from a foreign country.
The double standard is astonishing. According to their explanation, Donald Trump and I are directly responsible for the foreign bomb threats. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what the residents said about the problems in our town. Meanwhile, the media is reporting claims that Trump should be shot, and Harris supporters are calling for his removal.
This seems like a double standard, but at a deeper level it is completely consistent.
Consider Springfield. Residents say they have problems. This includes undeniable facts like rising traffic accidents, rising home prices, evictions, overcrowded hospitals, overworked schools, and rising disease. It also includes the infamous pet tale, which multiple people have spoken about (on video or to me or my staff).
Kamala Harris' first strategy was to ignore these people and their concerns. Yes, she prevented the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, but some of them ended up in the small town of Springfield, voiceless. Some local leaders even enjoyed the cheap labor. So the suffering of thousands of Americans was ignored.
Her campaign's next move was to push for censorship. In Springfield, some psychopath (or a foreign government) called in a bomb threat, so naturally they blamed President Trump and me. Threats of violence are disgraceful, yet the media seems to rejoice in them. They report on bomb threats but not on rising murders. They report on threats but not on rising HIV cases. They report on threats but not on schools overrun with non-English speaking freshmen. They report on threats but not on rising insurance premiums or the car accidents that caused them. They report on threats but not on Kamala Harris' failure of leadership.
Over the next seven weeks of this election, I will vigorously defend your right to express your opinion.
The goal is not to negate the rhetoric. Rather, reporting on bomb threats gives the threatener exactly what he wants: attention. The goal is to distract and embarrass. How dare you say this about issues related to Haitian immigration in Springfield: Just discussing the consequences of Kamala Harris' policies is putting people at risk. This is a form of moral blackmail designed not to make anyone safer, but to silence everyone.
Springfield is the most recent example, but it's not the most egregious.
The news about Hunter Biden's laptop was censored by a major IT company. And who could forget the blood of Ukrainian children who didn't support Kamala Harris' Ukraine policy? This last news item seems to have had some impact on Routh, Trump's latest would-be assassin.
The message is always the same: “You can't have an opinion on public issues in your country. Stay quiet.”
This is the difference between debate and censorship, even aggressive debate. It's one thing to accuse Kamala Harris of “destroying the country” and quite another to say Donald Trump “should be removed.” It's another thing to criticize heated rhetoric and say the former president invited his own assassination. It's another thing to say Trump's claims about the 2020 election are false and to try to remove him from the ballot because of them.
It's one thing to claim that pets aren't actually eaten; it's another to claim that anyone who disagrees is trying to kill people. Dissent, even vehement dissent, is a great American tradition. Censorship is not.
Over the next seven weeks of the campaign, I will vigorously defend your right to express your opinions. I believe you have the right to criticize me or Donald J. Trump, even if you say nasty or false things about us. But when I ask you to “cut back on the rhetoric,” I don't mean that you have the right to be nice or to use empty platitudes. Americans have the right to be mean, even if I don't like it.
Instead, I'm asking all of us to reject censorship. Reject the idea that we can control what other people think or say. Whether it's the power of big tech companies or moral blackmail, embrace persuasion instead of silencing your people. I think our public debate would be a lot better if we did that.
But there is something else: to reject censorship means to reject political violence; to accept censorship means, necessarily, to accept the violence of censorship.
The reason is simple: the logic of censorship leads to only one conclusion: there is only one sure way to silence a human being permanently, and that is with a bullet to the brain.
