Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday morning claimed “inflammatory language” from Democrats had provoked what the authorities are investigating as an assassination attempt against him, urging his rivals to tone down their speech even as he called them the “enemy from within” and “the real threat.”
Hours later, Mr. Trump in a social media post sought to link both Sunday’s incident and the attempt on his life in July to statements Vice President Kamala Harris has made and to the four criminal cases he is facing.
The authorities have not yet publicly commented on a motive for the suspect, who was arrested after fleeing Mr. Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday. But Mr. Trump told Fox News Digital on Monday that the gunman “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.”
Mr. Trump — who often uses violent language and whose frequent lies about the 2020 election led some of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — predicted an increase in political violence in his post online, saying, “Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”
His statements come as he has also increasingly voiced suspicions about the attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pa., in July, in which one attendee was killed, two others were critically injured and Mr. Trump was struck in the ear.
Law enforcement officials have yet to identify the motives of the gunman in that shooting, who was killed by Secret Service agents. But Mr. Trump has recently pointed to President Biden and Ms. Harris: During his debate with Ms. Harris, he said that the shooter “probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me.”
In Monday’s interview with Fox News, Mr. Trump called out Democrats’ accusations that he is a threat to democracy. The shorthand is often used by Democrats in reference to a number of Mr. Trump’s actions, like his promotion of debunked 2020 election lies, his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack the Capitol and his threats to use the levers of government against his political opponents.
Mr. Biden, before he dropped out of the race, campaigned heavily on portraying Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy. Ms. Harris has made that less of a focus of her campaign, but has touched on it. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress claim that such portrayals, as well as phrases like “extreme MAGA Republicans” and exhortations to “stop him” from holding power again, constitute incitement.
Mr. Trump has said his political opponents are the true threats to democracy as he claims without evidence that Mr. Biden coordinated the four criminal cases against him and that Ms. Harris’s replacing him on the Democratic ticket was tantamount to a “coup.”
Over the past year, the former president has likened his political opponents to “vermin” that he pledged to “root out” and described the left as an “enemy from within” that posed a more pernicious threat to America’s well-being than foreign enemies. He has suggested that some of his opponents should be subject to military tribunals for treason; urged his supporters to “go after” the New York attorney general, whose office filed a lawsuit against him for fraud; and said that Democrats are destroying the country.
Yet in his Fox News interview, Mr. Trump insisted he did not use “highly inflammatory language,” but added, “I can use it, too — far better than they can — but I don’t.”
The man charged in Sunday’s incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, has a muddled political history. At various points he appears to have spoken positively about candidates in both parties, including Tulsi Gabbard when she ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 (she has since left the party and is now aligned with Mr. Trump). Also in 2020, he invited Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to Hawaii. And in an interview with The New York Times last year, Mr. Routh, a former roofing contractor with no military experience, said he was willing to fight and die in Ukraine.
He has been charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Hours after reports of Sunday’s incident emerged, Mr. Trump sent a fund-raising email using similar language to that he has used to describe the criminal cases against him and the July assassination attempt. “Nothing will slow me down,” he wrote. “I will NEVER SURRENDER!”
His campaign’s home page was replaced by a fund-raising appeal claiming that “there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us.”
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