Trump’s campaign thinks the media is ignoring an apparent attempt on his life
The U.S. media is downplaying what the FBI labeled the second apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, his campaign said Tuesday.
Trump came close to violence on Sunday when a man allegedly staked out his West Palm Beach golf course and waited with a gun in the bushes near the sixth hole for the former president’s arrival.
The news broke dramatically Sunday and generated further reporting on Monday as the suspect, Ryan Routh, made his first appearance in court. But according to Trump’s team it wasn’t covered enough.
“Main stream media downplays Trump assassination – again,” Trump’s team wrote to title a release.
According to Trump’s team, USA Today “made zero mention of the assassination attempt on their front page following the second assassination attempt on President Trump,” which appears to be true of their Monday paper.
They weren’t the only ones.
“The Cleveland Plain-Dealer made zero mention of the assassination attempt on the 45th President and the Republican 2024 Nominee,” Trump’s team wrote.
“Get your magnifying glass out to find the mention of the assassination attempt on President Trump in the Portland Press-Herald,” they said.
Trump’s campaign then blasted Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris over their political rhetoric.
“This culture of extreme and reckless, unchecked statements by Kamala Harris and the Democrat party has stoked unprecedented fear and division in our nation that has gone unchecked by the mainstream media,” they wrote. “Bottom line: extreme rhetoric leads to extreme behavior – and this is evident by the would-be assassin’s social media footprint who posted to X, ‘DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.’ Sound familiar?”
Their assertions come as others point the finger at Trump over recent threats of violence toward immigrant communities.
Just this week, schools and government buildings in Springfield, Ohio, were closed due to dozens of bomb threats after Trump repeated falsehoods about Haitian migrants living there. The state’s governor and the city’s mayor — both Republicans — lay the blame for those threats of violence at Trump’s feet.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director at the immigration rights group America’s Voice, Trump’s campaign too often indulges an impulse “to degrade and disparage all immigrants and to continue to spread lies and stoke division is flat-out dangerous.”
“They don’t seem to care about the downstream consequences, which are already leading to threats against Haitians and the rest of Springfield and could – like those in El Paso and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and elsewhere – again lead to more real violence. More Republicans should join with Gov. DeWine and Mayor Rue to denounce the ongoing lies and conspiracies being purposely spread by the Trump campaign,” she said.