Bill Barr has it right.
"The bottom line I think is that when someone is demonized to the extent Trump was being demonized, you are putting a target on them, and you are increasing the risk they are going to become a target for someone who has a mixture of these factors -- imbalance, some potential political element to it. They become the target."
Bill Barr needs to look at the violent rhetoric in his own party. Here are a few examples cited by Heather Cox Richardson:
"•Trump’s own suggestion in 2016 that “Second Amendment people” could solve the problem of Hillary Clinton picking judges; or his 2020 attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who became the target of a kidnapping plot; or election workers bombarded with death threats as Trump lied that the 2020 election was stolen;
•the October 2022 tweet by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mocking then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul after a home intruder hit him in the head with a hammer; or Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2022 campaign video in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda” as she took aim with a rifle;
•in 2023, House Republicans wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress; Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) saying his wife slept with a loaded gun after he voted against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House speaker; or Republican representatives sending Christmas cards showing the whole family toting guns;
•in 2024, the Kansas Republican Party’s March fundraiser where attendees could donate to kick and punch an effigy of President Biden; or Don Jr.’s reposting an image of Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck;
•or Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who is running for the governorship and who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention starting tomorrow, saying just two weeks ago: “Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.”
Indeed, in March 2024, in Vance’s home state, Trump said: if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole…country,” and a 2022 campaign ad by Representative Collins himself showed him shooting a rifle at Nancy Pelosi’s “agenda” and at a cardboard rhinoceros he says is a “RINO,” a Republican in Name Only."
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