James Morrow opinion: Donald Trump shooting reveals real threat to democracy

OPINION: After the former US president escaped an assassination attempt at a campaign rally, it has revealed the real danger to America.

So, now we know who the real threat to democracy is – and it isn’t Donald Trump.

Instead, it is the legions of Democrats, progressives, hard left activists, campus goons, and social media trolls who set the stage for the attempted assassination of the former, and likely future, president.

Even before we know who the shooter was or what his motivations were, the left has worked tirelessly to demonise Donald Trump, make him and his supporters beyond the pale, and portray him as a unique and existential threat to American democracy.

Just a day before the attempted assassination – let’s call it what it was – President Joe Biden tweeted, “Americans want a president, not a dictator,” pushing the idea that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy from the highest podium in the land.

He also told a group of donors, “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents after shots were fired at a Pennsylvania campaign rally. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, just hours before the shooting, said “Someone who vilifies immigrants, who promotes xenophobia, who stokes hate and who incites fear should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone.”

Did someone take her a little too literally?

Vice President Kamala Harris at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Picture: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images/AFP

Last week former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a hugely prominent Democrat, told MSNBC – a network whose entire business model is based on revving up every anti-Trump conspiracy theory it can – that “Trump is such an authoritarian and autocrat, we have to win this election.”

“This is not a normal election … this is something that is undermining his democracy.”

“He must be stopped.”

Again, really?

It doesn’t take a lot to imagine that this could be taken the wrong way.

This wild, violent rhetoric from the left is everywhere.

Once-respectable publications from the Washington Post to The New Republic have called Trump “Hitler.”

US President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to US Representative Nancy Pelosi in May. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

New York Times columnist John McWhorter told a podcast he wished someone would kill Trump.

Meanwhile on X the topic “We Missed” was trending in the hours after the attempt.

Charming.

Oh, and let’s not forget the disgraceful act proposed in April by Democrat congressman Bennie Thompson that aimed to remove Trump’s Secret Service protection on the grounds that the former president is a convicted felon, thanks to the most dubious of legal processes.

And speaking of the Secret Service, hard questions will have to be asked of that agency, particularly how a would-be assassin apparently managed to make it onto a nearby rooftop with a clear line of sight to the former president’s podium.

Not long after the attempted assassination, the BBC aired an extraordinary interview with an eyewitness who claimed that he saw the gunman crawling on the roof of a nearby building and pointed him out to police, but no action was taken.

“We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away,” the man, identified as Greg Smith, said..

“He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle.”

“We’re pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we’re like ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’... and the police did not know what was going on.”

“I’m thinking to myself ‘Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage’... the next thing you know, five shots ring out,” he said.

Look, it is quite clear that while that in a country of 330 million people there will be nutters on both sides, American left has a real problem with violence.

Just before the 2020 election – and just months after Black Lives Matters protesters torched high streets across the nation – I was in Manhattan covering the first Trump-Biden presidential contest.

All down Fifth Avenue and Madison, and throughout the trendy shopping districts of Soho, stores were boarding up their windows in preparation for post-election violence.

I asked a shoe salesman downtown what the plywood was for and he said, “Oh, it’s in case the wrong guy wins.”

The “wrong” guy did not win, as it happened, and the plywood came down, but the message was clear: If Trump won, the left was going to have an epic and violent tantrum, just like they did in Washington in 2017 when they ran riot at the inauguration.

Again, who is the real threat to democracy and peace here?

Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, who was seriously injured when a hard left Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire at his Republican softball team’s practice in 2017 in an attempt to kill conservative lawmakers, was scathing.

“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” Scalise said in a statement.

“Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

Yes, but will it?

Unlikely. The left cannot help itself.