PNN – Referring to the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump’s life, the New York Times warned about the growing increase in political violence in American society and emphasized that Trump’s rhetoric has both encouraged his supporters to commit violence and targeted himself.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network from this media, as Americans approach the November 5 presidential election, former President Donald Trump appears to be both the inspiration and the apparent target of political violence in the United States. An issue that has increasingly shaped American politics in the modern era and made bomb threats and assassinations a part of the American political landscape.
Referring to the latest apparent assassination attempt against Trump, this analysis emphasized that violence has become normal in the American political system and that this issue is spreading.
Part of this article states: Even while Trump was complaining in an interview with Fox News that Democrats were targeting him and calling him a threat to democracy, he continued to repeat his rhetoric and said: These are the people who want to destroy our country and call them the enemy from within. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social networks and one of the most prominent and staunch supporters of Trump, published a post in which he wrote: And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala, created controversy. Although he later deleted the post, calling it a joke, White House spokesman Andrew Bates criticized it, saying violence should only be condemned, not encouraged or joked about. Such rhetoric is irresponsible.
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The New York Times further wrote: America’s history has experienced periods of political violence before. Four sitting presidents (in the White House) were killed while on duty and another was shot and wounded. A former president was also shot and survived, and many other people living in the White House were targeted. But two assassination attempts on the life of a former president in two months, especially in the midst of an election race in which he is a leading candidate, is something to ponder.
The author related this event to the time in 1975 when Gerald R. Ford, the former president of the United States, was shot twice in a little more than two weeks and survived each time unscathed, he compares and writes: More frighteningly, however, the attempts to kill Trump are reminiscent for many of 1968, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were gunned down two months apart. The assassinations came during a period of wider violence on America’s streets and amid a sense of disintegration of social bonds, something that worries many American leaders today.
The New York Times added: Donald Trump is at the heart of today’s eruption of political violence, a figure who seems to encourage people to make threats or take actions both for him and against him. He has long used the language of violence in his political discourse, encouraging his supporters to beat up his critics, threatening to shoot looters and illegal immigrants, fatally attacking the wife of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ridicules and suggests that the general who considers him unfaithful should be executed.
In explaining how Trump’s statements affect the American society, the author wrote: Trump does not think to understand the impact of his words. Last week, for example, his false accusations against Haitian immigrants that they eat Americans’ pets during a debate with Democratic Nominee Kamala Harris were quickly followed by bomb threats from supporters which endangered life in Springfield, Ohio. And yet he did nothing to calm the situation. Trump’s critics have also used the language of violence at times – although not widely and frequently and at the highest levels. A series of videos of his opponents have been posted online in which they say they want to slap Trump in the face. Some of the more extreme anti-Trump voices on social media have mocked or downplayed the Florida golf course shooting yesterday.
In the end, the author wrote: Of course, anger – both the anger that he arouses among his supporters against his rivals and the anger that he creates among his opponents – has long been the motivating force of Trump’s political era. It is a measure of the extent to which political violence has become a part of modern American culture.