MILWAUKEE — A House Republican didn’t hesitate when asked if years of labeling former President Donald Trump a threat to democracy played a role in the assassination attempt against him.
“I absolutely do,” Rep. Harriett Hageman (R-WY) said at a Moms for Liberty event outside the Republican National Convention. “We’re in a very strange moment in time in the sense that if you believe in freedom and liberty, they call us fascists. They put President Trump on the cover of a magazine equating him to Hitler. As I have said over and over again, there is only one Hitler.”
Comparisons between Trump and Adolf Hitler have abounded throughout the presidential race, as have accusations that Trump represents an existential threat to Democracy in the United States. Hageman slammed the talking points as being dangerous, with the memory of Trump’s brush with death still fresh.
“Every time that you compare someone to [Hitler], you are really denigrating what happened during World War II,” she added. “It is totally ahistorical. It’s a level of slander and libel that is beyond the pale.”
Attention has also focused on President Joe Biden’s remarks to supporters that they should “put Trump in a bullseye” just days before the attack. Biden later said he regrets the remarks and has called to lower the temperature in politics going forward.
But Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said Hageman was “absolutely correct” in suggesting overheated language can lead to violence, saying his office has received repeated threats since he entered Congress.
“The level of venom has reached a point where you have someone deciding to take lives into their own hand,” he said. “President Trump, by the grace of God, is with us today.”
Biden argues that it is Trump who has used violent rhetoric on the campaign trail and said he only wanted Trump’s agenda to be put in the crosshairs.
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At the convention, RNC Co-Chairwoman Lara Trump told the Washington Examiner that Trump has also been criticized for his telling the crowd to “fight, fight, fight” in the moments after the shooting and came to his defense.
“It was really about this country and showing America he was ok, and really giving a message to the rest of the world that, in some ways, I see it as really he’s kind of the personification of America,” she said. “And yes, we get knocked down. Yes, we have hard times. We always get back up, we always fight, we always rise to the occasion, and a lot of people are trying to criticize him for that, but I think, gosh, do we need a fighter right now.”