These days, you can never tell. The old party lines are breaking down. Stalwart Republican Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris. So has his daughter Liz and another former Republican member of Congress, Adam Kinzinger. Meanwhile, a scion of the most celebrated Democrat family in the world, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is going with Trump. So is Tulsi Gabbard, who once ran for president of the United States herself as a Democrat. Elon Musk, who a few years ago called Trump a “dumb**s,” appeared with him on the campaign trail.
In this atmosphere, it cannot be taken for granted that even pillars of the Republican and Democrat establishments are actually going to vote for their designated candidates. That’s why it was a bit surprising, and refreshing, that two of those Republican pillars, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) excoriated Kamala Harris for calling Trump a “fascist” and thereby bringing the already hysterical public discourse to a new boiling point. It would have been just as believable if McConnell in particular, a quintessential Washington insider who has clashed with Trump more than once, had endorsed Harris’ inflammatory rhetoric.
Fox News reported Friday that McConnell and Johnson said in a statement that “labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist’ risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day."
That is undoubtedly true, although if there is a new attempt on Trump’s life, Harris and her media sycophants will simply blame the victim again. By this time, this is a tried-and-true strategy. Old Joe Biden set the standard for the left’s strident rhetoric against Trump when he proclaimed, in his famous red-and-black speech on Sept. 1, 2022, that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Then later, after both attempts on Trump’s life, Old Joe and his henchmen blamed Trump’s rhetoric for the overheated atmosphere. The establishment media happily plays along, so Kamala knows that she has nothing to lose by trotting out this tired playbook again.
And so when Fox asked the Harris campaign about the warning from McConnell and Johnson, Harris just doubled down, saying: "Well, listen, we all must speak out against any form of political violence, and I'm very clear about that. No one should be the subject of violence. But the American people deserve to be presented with facts and the truth. And the fact and the truth is that some of the people closest to Donald Trump when he was president, generals, including most recently, John Kelly, a four-star marine general, have been very clear about the danger and the threat that Donald Trump poses to America and the fact that he is unfit to serve. And the American People deserve to hear that and know about that." In other words, Trump is a fascist, and she is going to keep claiming this, no matter what.
Johnson and McConnell did their best to compel Harris to take some responsibility and do the decent thing: “Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions." That raises a piquant question: does the hard left even care about “base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions”? Or are they only interested in securing and maintaining power, no matter what doing so requires them to do?
Johnson and McConnell added: "We have both been briefed on the ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump by adversaries to the United States, and we call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats."
They must know that there is absolutely no chance that Harris will heed their advice. For her to do so would require a level of decency and mutual respect that has long since vanished from American politics.
Related: Kamala Is Running Hard for the Hate-America Vote
Indeed, Harris has to escalate the threat environment. That’s how she fires up her base. She certainly can’t run on the Biden-Harris regime’s abysmal record, and her handlers know it, so they have thrown everything behind a strategy of smearing Trump as an imminent threat to freedom, democracy, and all that it’s good. McConnell and Johnson ought to be grateful that Harris is contenting herself to comparing Trump with Hitler, rather than saying he is straight-up Lucifer.
McConnell and Johnson decried the fact that "in the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus." They might have noted that even the fact that there have been two assassination attempts against Trump during this election season and there could easily be another one any day now is testimony to how much the left has poisoned the political discourse.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what they wrote. Harris will pay no attention and continue crying wolf. We can only hope that the object of her incandescent hatred won’t get hurt, but there is no guarantee.
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