“Roughly two hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) blamed President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump\u2019s attempted assassination,\u201d Vance, the odds-on favorite<\/a> to be Trump\u2019s vice president, wrote on X<\/a> (formerly known as Twitter).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vance was not alone<\/a>. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) wrote that \u201cJoe Biden sent the orders.\u201d Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote that \u201cDemocrats wanted this to happen.\u201d Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said something similar<\/a>. So did Sen. Tim Scott<\/a> (R-SC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this happened Saturday night<\/a>, before we knew a single thing about the shooter\u2019s identity or motive. Since then, the Secret Service has identified him as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, and we still don\u2019t know much about his motive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal data<\/a> shows he gave $15 to a progressive PAC in 2021<\/a>, but more recent Pennsylvania voter records<\/a> list him as a registered Republican<\/a>. A classmate told local news<\/a> that he was a bullied loner who frequently wore \u201chunting\u201d outfits to school. None of these crumbs establish why he might have targeted the former president, and so far no one has found any online accounts under Crooks\u2019s name that could help make sense of his actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we can be confident that none of this speculation was even remotely connected to the facts at the time it happened. Prominent Republicans were conjuring up a Democratic boogeyman, all but openly telling their supporters that Biden and his allies were behind the attack on Trump\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s dangerous. Very, very dangerous. And it should cause us to reflect more broadly on how our political leaders should respond to political violence in our country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n