Andrew Stiles and Thaleigha Rampersad write for the Washington Free Beacon about media reaction to the latest assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump.
Donald Trump survived another assassination attempt over the weekend. Ryan Wesley Routh, a deranged Kamala Harris supporter and Iranian government sympathizer was arrested Sunday after brandishing a rifle in Trump’s vicinity—drawing fire from U.S. Secret Service personnel—while the former president played golf at his club in West Palm Beach.
Doing what comes naturally, the mainstream media sought to downplay the violent episode while seizing the opportunity to blame Trump for inciting violence against himself.The front page of USA Today on Monday proclaimed, “Hope in America,” with a brief note on the “incident” in Florida that occurred two months after Trump was “injured” at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. In the same space, the paper touted an update on the condition of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, along with news about the “winners and best fashions” from the Emmy awards.
Bloomberg described the assassination attempt as “the latest jolt” in a “chaotic” campaign. CBS News and others covered the attempted assassination using photos of Trump in court, rather than the iconic photos taken moments after the first attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, which journalists have denounced as “dangerous” propaganda. Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote that the gunman’s decision to target Trump was indicative of “how much the American political landscape has been shaped by anger stirred by [Trump] and against him.”
NBC News reported that a man was in custody following the “Trump golf club incident,” while network anchor Lester Holt told his Nightly News audience that the “apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric.” He wasn’t talking about the repeated denunciations of Trump on MSNBC and other media outlets as the modern-day equivalent of Adolf Hitler who must be stopped before he abolishes democracy and murders his enemies. Holt was suggesting (without evidence) a link between the assassination attempt and Trump’s comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
