After the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, President Trump released a four-minute video from the Oval Office in which he condemned the killing as the “tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day.”
Then, instead of calling for Americans of all political stripes to lower the temperature, Mr. Trump rattled off a list of political violence only targeting Republicans or perpetrated by those he views as on the left: the assassination attempts against him; attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers; the assassination of a health care executive in New York; and the mass shooting of Republicans at a congressional baseball practice that nearly killed Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
Even though the authorities had not identified a suspect or motive, Mr. Trump placed the blame squarely on his political opponents.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Mr. Trump said. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Missing from Mr. Trump’s list was any reference to political violence targeting Democrats or perpetuated by those on the right. The president made no mention of the recent killings in Minnesota of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, who were on a hit list of dozens of left-wing figures; the arson attack on the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, while he and his family slept; a shooter’s attack on the C.D.C.; a hammer assault on the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the shootings at an Arizona campaign office of Kamala Harris; or the Jan. 6 pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol that injured roughly 150 police officers.
In doing so, experts said, Mr. Trump captured the raw sentiment of his conservative base — the feeling of being under constant threat from the left in a country that is abandoning them. But the remarks addressed only part of the seemingly endless cycle of political violence America is experiencing.
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The post As Political Violence Rises, Trump Condemns One Side appeared first on New York Times.
