Any number of theories and critiques have emerged since the, thankfully, unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at a political event in Pennsylvania on Saturday as he campaigned for a return to the White House.
A lot of questions remain unanswered about the chaotic and horrifying incident, as investigators seek to determine the shooter’s motivations and politicians look to transform a tragic act into a political advantage despite a dearth of solid information.
Enter Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green.
During an appearance in Somerset on Monday addressing the assault, Paul volunteered “it would be helpful if President Biden would tone his rhetoric down, frankly,” theorizing that his remarks may have sparked the occurrence, specifically noting that Biden should stop characterizing Trump, his Republican foe, as “a threat to the country.”
“The fact that he’s saying all of the time that somehow President Trump is a threat to democracy, …the Soviet Union was a threat to democracy, Hitler was a threat to democracy, but comparing Trump to the Soviet Union and to Hitler isn’t helpful and it’s instigating people to think, ‘Oh my goodness, if President Trump wins democracy will end,’” Paul said. “When you say such hyperbolic things, I think crazy people somehow can be incited by.”
While both sides have engaged in heated exchanges during the campaign, Paul maintained “it’s mostly incumbent on President Biden to tone down the rhetoric’” since the violence was directed at Trump, insisting that Biden “needs to quit saying how Trump is Hitler or Trump is a threat to democracy. That needs to stop.”
“The implication is he is such a threat to democracy that, well, maybe you’re warranted in doing something if we can’t stop you at the ballot box,” Paul said.
(Quick time out: It should be noted that Biden hasn’t projected Trump as the next Hitler, although he has said the Lord of Mar-a-Lago has adopted some of the erstwhile Nazi leader’s tactics, like utilizing the Big Lie, a gross fabrication employed for propaganda and political purposes. Paul may instead be thinking of Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH, Trump’s running mate, who dispatched a text message to a friend back in 2016 saying Trump could become “America’s Hitler.” Now back to our program.)
This, of course, represents neither the first nor the last time in politics that an opponent has been accused of issuing statements that can potentially result in violence. As recently as two years ago, one long-term, well-respected public official testified before a Senate panel that, “I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.”
In one specific incident, a man was arrested at a traffic stop in Iowa, telling police he was on his way to Washington, armed with an AR-15, to kill the official who, for 38 years, served as one of the nation’s top health officials.
That would be Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who gained notoriety leading the federal government’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and who, at least as of last year, still required security protection from the U.S. Marshall service because of threats.
And the man whose rhetoric resulted in the threats? You guessed it. Sen. Rand Paul, who for years harassed Fauci to the point of obsession.
The two men differed over the source of the pandemic and whether Fauci approved federal funds for gain-of-function research, a medical science process that Paul maintained led to the deadly pandemic.
If it had remained a difference of opinion between the two men it wouldn’t have caused a ripple. But Paul made it more than that, declaring that Fauci lied about COVID’s origin and research, that he should “go to prison’’ and, most sensationally of all, that Fauci carried some responsibility for millions of deaths.
“You’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around them from a pandemic,” Paul told Fauci during a Senate Health Committee hearing in July 2021.
Now it’s possible you think Paul regrets some of the flammable rhetoric directed at Fauci. You would be wrong. In January, during an appearance on The Cats Roundtable at WABC-AM in New York, Paul said of Fauci, “For his dishonesty, frankly, he should go to prison,”
“For his mistake in judgment, he should just be pilloried,” Paul said. “He should never be accepted.”
Paul even upped the ante on the number of deaths he maintains Fauci had a hand in, insisting that the world-renowned immunologist directly contributed to the deaths of “somewhere between 10 and 20 million” as a result of funding gain-of-function research, a claim Fauci denies.
Now it seems if declaring that someone is a threat to democracy – a claim that isn’t all that uncommon in political discourse, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, recently said Biden was “unAmerican’’ because of his energy policies – blaming someone for 20 million deaths might just raise the hackles of someone with a gun, like it or not.
There’s a reason to raise this point other than to show Rand Paul is a grade-A crank, which comes as no news to anyone who has followed his career. It has to be asked – how much of his concern is real and how much is staged for the rubes to gain a political edge?
It appears coordinated. Paul isn’t the lone wolf Republican looking to slam the door on the efforts of Biden and the Democrats to wage a campaign against Trump based on his autocratic pronouncements and his often-undemocratic meanderings.
“When the message goes out constantly that the election of Donald Trump would be a threat to democracy and that the Republic would end, it heats up the environment,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, adding, “It’s simply not true. Everyone needs to turn the rhetoric down.”
Then there’s Vance, the running mate: “The 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’s attempted assassination.”
Sound familiar?
Trump makes it easy for Democrats to attack him on the issues that Republicans are now raising defenses against. It goes beyond his effort to overturn a legitimately conducted election in 2020 by instigating an insurrection while trying to convince the House and Senate to reject the results that threw him out of office.
Is there anything more undemocratic than that?
Trump has vowed, if elected, to transform the Justice Department into his own, personal persecution squad, seeking to use its powers to bring down his enemies, including, perhaps, Biden. He has vowed to be a dictator on the day he assumes office to implement harsh immigration restrictions and expand oil drilling. He loves and likely hopes to emulate the styles of Viktor Oban of Hungary and Vladimir Putin of Russia, two of the biggest autocrats the world has to offer.
His undemocratic and authoritarian tendencies render him unsuitable for office and the attempt on his life, a terrible incident that killed one bystander and sent two others to the hospital, shouldn’t disguise that. And we’re not even discussing unrelated factors that render him unfit, like he raped a woman and was found guilty on 34 felony counts.
In an olive branch to Paul, he sounded sincere when he told reporters, “we do need to learn how to live together without people resorting to violence.”
He was speaking from experience – Paul was on hand and in extreme danger in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on a group of congressional Republicans practicing for the annual congressional baseball game. Current House Republican Leader Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, was almost killed in the attack.
Carlson: “Getting shot in the face will change a man.”
But, shot in the ear? Not so much.