JD Vance Rips Democrats, The Media After Trump Assassination Attempt

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) published a lengthy X post on Monday night slamming the media and the Democrat Party for rhetoric before and after the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life over the weekend.

Vance made the remarks after authorities in Florida arrested 58-year-old Ryan Routh — a Democrat donor with a criminal history that barred him from owning firearms — on Sunday after he hid on Trump International Golf Course West Palm Beach for 12 hours armed with an AK-17.

Vance, who is Trump’s vice presidential running mate, said that the rhetoric coming from the political Left was “out of control.”

“It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed a few years ago,” he said, recounting the far-Left man who opened fire on Republican members of Congress practicing baseball while screaming, “This is for healthcare.”

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“Here is what we know so far: Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed, and used the exact same phrase. He had a Kamala Harris bumper sticker on his truck,” he continued. “He was obsessed with Ukraine’s ‘fight for Democracy’ and absorbed many unhinged views about the Russia-Ukraine war. His name is Ryan Routh, and he donated 19 times to Democrat causes and zero to Republican ones.”

Vance continued:

How do you think the Democrats and their media allies would respond if a 19-time Republican donor tried to kill a Democratic official? It’s a question that answers itself. For years, Kamala Harris’s campaign surrogates have said things like “Trump has to be eliminated.” And how have their media allies responded to the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in as many months?

NBC News called the attempted assassination a “golf club incident.” The LA Times told us “Trump Targeted at Golf Club.” The USA Today’s top of the fold headline is “Hope in America,” and they published a preposterous letter to the editor arguing that Trump “brings these assassination attempts on himself.” CNN’s Dana Bash–who just yesterday bizarrely accused me of inciting a bomb threat–said today that Harris campaign rhetoric didn’t motivate Routh even though he echoed their rhetoric explicitly.

PBS’s weekend show perfectly illustrates the double standard of Kamala Harris’s media friends. After spending 30 seconds on the second assassination attempt on President Trump, they then focused on the real danger: me and President Trump, who are, according to them, personally responsible for bomb threats against Springfield. Of course, I repeatedly condemend those threats. And reports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.

Vance ripped the media for blaming him and Trump for the bomb threats that were called into Springfield, Ohio, after the two repeated stories from residents there about problems involving migrants.

“Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot,” he said, referencing numerous inflammatory remarks that Democrats and the media have made against Trump in recent years. “This seems like a double standard. But at a deep level, it is entirely consistent.”

Vance accused the media of burying the story about tens of thousands of Haitian migrants relocating to Springfield, which has lowered the quality of life for the American citizens living there due to “higher car accidents, unaffordable housing, evictions of residents, overcrowded hospitals, overstressed schools, and rising rates of disease.”

Vance continued:

Kamala Harris’s first strategy was to ignore these people and their concerns. Yes, she had prevented the deportation of millions of illegal aliens, and some of them made their way to Springfield. But it was a small town with no voice. Some of the local leadership even loved the cheap labor. So the suffering of thousands of American citizens went ignored.

Their next move with these stories is censorship. In Springfield, a psychopath (or a foreign government) calls in a bomb threat, so they blame that on President Trump (and me). The threat of violence is disgraceful of course, yet the media seems to relish it. They cover a bomb threat, but not the rise in murders. They cover the threat, but not the HIV uptick. They cover the threat, not the schools overwhelmed with new kids who don’t speak English. They cover the threat, not rising insurance rates or the car accidents that caused them. They cover the threat, not the failures of Kamala Harris’s leadership.

The purpose is not to turn down the rhetoric. If anything, covering the bomb threats gives whoever makes them exactly what he wants: attention. The purpose is distraction and shame. How dare you talk about the problems of Haitian migration in Springfield? You’re endangering people, simply by discussing the problems of Kamala Harris’s policies. It’s a form of moral blackmail, designed not to make anyone safe but to shut everyone up.

The 40-year-old said that his goal for the next 7 weeks was to “vigorously defend your right to speak your mind” and to encourage people to reject censorship.

“Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf,” he added. “The reason is simple. The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.”