August 1, 2019

Menacing Invective Against Trump Creates Dangerous Climate

Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has bragged on two occasions that he would like to beat up President Donald Trump.

Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has bragged on two occasions that he would like to beat up President Donald Trump.

In March 2018, Biden huffed, “They asked me would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no. I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

Biden’s tough-guy braggadocio was apparently no slip. A year later, he doubled down on his physical threats.

“The idea that I’d be intimidated by Donald Trump? … He’s the bully that I’ve always stood up to. He’s the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I’d smack him in the mouth.”

Had former Vice President Dick Cheney ever dared to say something similar of President Obama, what would the media reaction have been?

Recently, Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.), another presidential candidate, took up where Biden left off:

“Trump is a guy who you understand he hurts you, and my testosterone sometimes makes me want to feel like punching him, which would be bad for this elderly, out-of-shape man that he is if I did that. This physically weak specimen.”

One trait of the Democratic field of presidential candidates is always to sound further to the left than any of their primary rivals. Apparently, a similar habit is to see who can most effectively imagine beating up the president. For now, Booker seems to be in first place.

The current candidates are just channeling three years of sick showboating by Hollywood celebrities.

Actor Robert De Niro has repeatedly expressed a desire to physically assault trump. A month before Trump was elected, De Niro said of him, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Later, De Niro doubled down with a series of “F— Trump” outbursts.

This is especially dangerous in the aftermath of progressive zealot and Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s 2017 attempt to assassinate Republican congressmen at a practice for a charity baseball game. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and nearly killed. Three other people were also shot and wounded.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), just hours after she was sworn in, said a rally that she had promised her young son that “we’re going to impeach the motherf—r.”

Donald Trump is a controversial president, no doubt. He replies to his critics with strong, often inflammatory invective.

Yet the continued litany of threats to physically assault or kill a president is lowering the bar of assassination, and it will haunt the country long after Trump is gone.

On the day Trump was inaugurated, the pop music star Madonna told a large crowd outside the White House that she had thought of blowing it up.

A few months later, comedian Kathy Griffin issued a video where she held up a bloody facsimile of a decapitated Trump head.

Since then, Hollywood and the entertainment industry have been in constant competition to imagine the most gruesome way of killing off Trump — stabbing, blowing up, burning, shooting, suffocating, decapitating or beating.

Celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, George Lopez, Moby, Rosie O'Donnell, Mickey Rourke and Larry Wilmore seem to relish the media attention as they discuss or demonstrate what they consider to be creative ways to kill the president.

It is hard to determine whether their tweets and outbursts are designed to restore sagging careers, are heartfelt expressions of pure hatred, or both.

We saw something similar to the current climate of threatened violence during the re-election campaign and second presidential term of George W. Bush.

A few columnists, documentary filmmakers and novelists went well beyond the boilerplate invective of calling Bush a fascist, racist, Nazi and war criminal, and imagined his assassination in a variety of ways.

But we are now well beyond even that rhetorical violence.

Trump and his critics often go at it relentlessly in interviews, in Twitter wars, and on television and radio. No insult seems too petty for Trump to ignore.

Yet progressives like Biden and Booker seem to think that by bragging of wanting to do violence to the president, they will rev up their base and win attention, as if physical violence is justified by Trump’s unorthodox presidency.

Nonetheless, the current climate is becoming scary. Those who brag of wanting to violently attack the president should worry about where their boasts will finally lead if any of the thousands of James Hodgkinsons in America take such threats seriously and act upon them.

© 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.