'No Ears Were Harmed. Carry On': Mainstream Media Downplays Second Assassination Attempt, Blames Trump For Bringing It On Himself

Following the second attempted assassination of 45th President Donald Trump on Sunday, members of the media and left-wing personalities have begun to downplay the attempt on the Republican candidate's life, with one outlet even publishing a letter to the editor that explained that Trump brought the attempted murder on himself.

In a letter to the editor of Cincinnatti.com's The Enquirer, Felicia Duncan from Sharonville argued that Trump's rhetoric is to blame for his targeting, "There is no place in politics for violence. That said, the former president, Donald Trump, brings a lot of this stuff on himself," Duncan wrote. "When he continues to push lies about legal immigrants like the ones in Springfield, Ohio; when he continues to insist he was not the loser of the 2020 election; when he continues to spout how he wants to use our military to "round up" and deport immigrants who are not white from this country, he brings the crazies out, and one of those crazies tries to shoot him."

NBC News host Lester Holt also seemed to blame the attempted attack on Trump's recent comments about Springfield, Ohio, telling the audience, "Today's apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance, continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio," Holt said.

An opinion piece in The Washington Post entitled "Another chance for Trump to frame Democrats as dangerous has emerged," argued that the assassination attempt will allow Trump to blame Democrats for their rhetoric that accuses him of being a "threat to democracy." On Monday, Trump did hold Democrats responsible for not lowering the temperature. "He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it," Trump explained to Fox News. "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out." 

Members of the media weren't the only ones trying to downplay the assassination attempt. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) also blamed the Republican candidate's rhetoric for the attempted assassination, explaining on CNN, "This really seems to be the confluence of two very bad things going on in the Republican Party ... the attempts to divide, to enrage the population."

Rachel Vindman, the wife of 2019 impeachment witness Alexander Vindman, wrote on X, "No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon." She later doubled down, writing, "Sorry you're triggered. I mean no I'm not. I don't care a little bit." She later apologized for her comments after intense pushback, "I have deleted my tweet. It was flippant & political violence is a serious issue. Whether it's aimed at a former president, the media, immigrants, or political 'enemies' & every incident should be addressed appropriately if we want to change the tenor of our political discourse."

In a press release, the Trump campaign provided dozens of examples of how Democrat rhetoric "egged on" the would-be asssassin to plot the 45th president's murder. "Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump was the target of a second assassination attempt in as many months," Team Trump wrote. "Thankfully, the would-be assassin was stopped by the heroic action of law enforcement — but make no mistake, this psycho was egged on by the rhetoric and lies that have flowed from Kamala Harris, Democrats, and their Fake News allies for years."

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