We keep raising the rhetorical heat. After Trump shooting, let’s get back to reality | Opinion

But for a gust of wind or a slightly better shot, we’d be talking about Donald Trump’s death today. That’s a moment for serious reflection about how we’ve talked about this man for the last decade. This is the third attempted assassination of Republican leaders in that time and it is largely luck that has kept them all alive.

There need be no apologies for judging Trump to be unfit for office. He is deserving of much of the harsh rhetoric he has invited from his political opponents.

However, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, as he has been accused on the cover of The New Republic magazine, in social media posts and speeches. Nor are the Republicans like Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise or Supreme Court Justice Brett Cavanaugh, who also faced the specter of gun violence in recent years, anything vaguely akin to Nazis.

For decades, college ethics classes have debated whether it would have been moral to kill Hitler before he tried to exterminate Europe’s Jews and ignited a war that killed tens of millions of other innocents. It is not a hard call. One bullet to save millions of lives.

And it is reasonable for people to worry about Trump’s tendencies. It is true that Donald Trump wants to put millions in camps, and already put children in cages, but that is so he can deport them, not kill them in gas chambers. It is true that Donald Trump has targeted people for their religion, but that is to prevent them from traveling here, not as a prelude to genocide.

It is also true that Donald Trump may ignite a world war, but it is his feckless approach to the NATO alliance and his appeasement of dictators that will spark it, not the invasion of peaceful neighbors.

Moreover, Trump himself is no novice when it comes to targeting his political opponents with violence-adjacent rhetoric. It is not lost on me as I travel to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that I have been dubbed an “enemy of the people” for my work in the news business. He says his political opponents are out to “destroy” our nation. He has falsely claimed that Democrats have undermined our nation’s democracy by stealing the 2020 election.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if some of his followers picked up arms to defend their country from such threats. But that is not what happened Saturday night. A 20-year-old gunman of uncertain political views tried to kill our former president, perhaps spurred on by the ill-considered words of current President Joe Biden, who said “It is time to put Trump in a bullseye.” As much as we decried the rhetoric on Jan. 6, Biden doesn’t get a pass.

We all know what Democrats and many allies in the press would say if the shoe was on the other foot — if it were Biden who was bloodied and defiant after being targeted by a would-be assassin.

There would be a rush to condemn the violent rhetoric and weeks of questions from the press, angry editorials and backpedaling by Republicans spooked at the prospect of a sympathy vote wiping them out in the November elections. All the smart people would call on both sides to cool the rhetoric and focus on what brings us together as Americans, to end the division and hatred.

Well, now those who have used the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” who have thoughtlessly invoked Hitler, must atone for their overheated rhetoric. Accountability should start with apologies and end with the judgment of the American people on Election Day.

But the one thing that must happen is that those principled and reasonable people who have always opposed Trump for his amoral, unaccountable and reckless ways must continue to tell the truth about this man even as he basks in the glow of national revulsion at his attempted murder.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio or email him at dmastio1@yahoo.com