Old Joe Biden said it during his ominous black-and-red speech on September 1: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” On Sunday, the twenty-first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, jihad terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand people, Chuck Todd on Meet the Press did his best to emphasize the alleged threat that Trump supporters pose to “our democracy,” by which Leftists always mean their own hegemony over the political process. Todd asked Vice President Kamala Harris: “Look, we’re at the twenty-first, um, marking, if you will, of the September 11th attacks. This was a foreign terrorist attacking our democracy, attacking this country. We’re now as a nation battling a threat from within. Is the threat equal or greater than what we faced after 9/11?”
Chuck Todd: “We’re now as a nation battling a threat from within. Is the threat equal or greater than what we faced after 9/11?”
VP Kamala Harris: “…there is an oath that we always take which is to defend and uphold our constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” pic.twitter.com/fYVFwn2OQW
— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) September 11, 2022
Harris could have seized the opportunity to remind Todd and the nation that political dissent was not terrorism; instead, she took Todd’s comparison seriously, although she declined to take Todd’s bait and rank the alleged domestic terror threat higher than the jihad threat. “That’s an interesting question,” Harris parried. “Um, I have held many elected offices, as district attorney, attorney general, senator, now vice president, and there’s an oath that we always take, which is to defend and uphold our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We don’t compare the two in the oath, but we know they both can exist, and we must defend against it.” She was on board with Todd’s premise that the nation faced domestic enemies as formidable as the 9/11 terrorists, if not more so. Biden’s speech ten days before made it clear who those domestic enemies were.
One Twitter user responded with a succinct summation of what’s wrong with what Harris said: “Apparently I am now worse than an Islamic terrorist for just wanting my government to adhere to the Constitution and leave me alone.” Another quipped, “‘Threat from within?’ as he literally stares part of the problem in the face.”
Harris’ assumptions were not singular. Far-Left comedian Kathy Griffin, whose idea of comedy in 2017 was to distribute a photo of herself holding an effigy of Trump’s bloody severed head, tweeted on September 6, “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican.” When she was called out for this, Griffin resorted to the familiar tactic of projection: “You guys. The maga blue checks are at it again. Because they are constantly threatening Civil War, they are now trying to suggest that I am the one who is threatening a Civil War. Because you know, that’s my thing.” She had just threatened civil war two hours before this, but never mind.
On September 3, MSNBC guest Roland Martin, a Leftist pundit and motivational speaker, condemned Republicans as “evil” and declared, “We are at war with these people.” Also on MSNBC, on August 18, network host Tiffany Cross railed against news outlets that offered viewpoints opposing the dominant Left: “You have millions of people tuning into a propaganda network every night. And then, as if that were not bad enough, that’s an extremist network itself, you have these fringe pop-up outlets from OAN to Newsmax, then you have the social media component. That train has left the station. There is no ‘let’s deal with the rhetoric.’ At this point, I do think we have to have serious conversations around preparing for actual violence.”
Cross added, “People keep saying a civil war is coming — I would say a civil war is here. And I don’t mean to be hyperbolic. We can look at what has happened just in the past week alone since all this has happened. We’ve had two people try to declare war with FBI field offices. I don’t think, at this point, we’re going to pack up our bags and go home and sing kumbaya. So, from a law enforcement angle, what would you recommend the infrastructure of the country do? Because not everybody has the security of Capitol Hill.”
Harris and these Leftist pundits, however, are engaged in classic projection tactics. The threat of civil war is real, as is the possibility of racial conflict and general violence. But the threat is coming from their friends and allies on the Left, not the Right. It is the Left that is relentlessly pushing the nation into an ever-deeper crisis. If Harris wants to see a domestic enemy, she should look in the mirror.
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