Jonathan Turley has an op ed on The Hill website titled The attempted assassination of Trump is not nearly as surprising as it should be.
That's because, according to Turley, of all the violent rhetoric that has been swirling about our political discourse.
So, whose to blame ?
For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides.
A surprising fair and balanced assessment coming from a guy with Turley's (spell check wanted Turkey's) right wing credentials.
But thats where the fair and balanced segment ends. That one line. Like, spit it out, get it out of the way, then go on and bury it with the one side is to blame list of examples of violent rhetoric.
The very next line:
That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy, unleash “death squads” and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.”
The line after that:
President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric.
Then the pitch for his new book:
I discuss this rage rhetoric in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
One more paragraph and you get the idea. Not a single example of violent rhetoric from those on his side:
Some of us have been saying for years that this rage rhetoric is a dangerous political pitch for the nation. While most people reject the hyperbolic claims, others take them as true. They believe that homosexuals are going to be “disappeared” as claimed on ABC’s “The View” or that the Trump “death squads” are now green lighted by a conservative Supreme Court, as claimed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
At one point he inadvertantly writes something that resonates with some truth:
Some compared stopping Trump to stopping Hitler in 1933.
It goes on and on. Joe Biden, the Democrats, liberal media, liberal celebrities and pundits are stoking the flames with violence.
But Trump? Republicans? Conservative media, pundits, and celebrities?
“Oh, look look! Over there! See that shiny object? Yeah! Look at that!
The unfortunate outcome of this onesided garbage is nothing that will get better.
While Biden calls for scaling back the violence, the right is escalating.
And it's probably going to get worse.