Media Rush To Downplay Second Trump Assassination Effort

In fewer than 24 hours, America’s ethically bankrupt regime media are already attempting to whitewash Sunday’s second assassination attempt against President Donald Trump.

While Trump was playing golf at his West Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Secret Service agents spotted a man in bushes near the course with a large rifle. After agents fired on him, the man later identified as Ryan Routh fled the scene in a vehicle and was later detained by authorities.

Routh is a longtime Democrat donor who has regurgitated anti-Trump rhetoric often used by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. After spending years vilifying the former president and his supporters with the worst smears imaginable, so-called “journalists” are now rushing to downplay the attempt on Trump’s life through deceptively worded headlines and grotesque “news” segments.

The Washington Post kicked off its coverage of the suspect’s failed murder attempt by publishing an article with the headline, “Trump golf course incident investigated as potential assassination attempt.” The headline appears to have been changed to “Trump safe after potential assassination attempt at golf course.”

NBC News also framed the assassination attempt as an “incident” in a Sunday article about Routh. Unlike the Post, however, NBC News did not mention that the “incident” was an attempt on Trump’s life.

“Man in custody after Trump golf club incident was once convicted of possessing a machine gun,” the NBC headline reads. A print edition of a Reuters article was titled “Report: Trump safe after gunfight near Fla. golf club.”

Time magazine whitewashed Routh’s history of supporting Democrats in a tweet summarizing an article on Routh, characterizing the alleged would-be assassin as a “58-year-old with unclear political ideology.” Only after clicking on the linked article do readers learn of Routh’s ActBlue donations and left-wing political history.

The Democrat propaganda outlet known as Axios tried to equate the second assassination attempt against Trump with the demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“This election year has been home to America’s worst political violence in almost a half-century, and it’s only mid-September. The danger of copy-cat wannabe assassins or another Jan. 6 is real,” the outlet’s Mike Allen and Noah Bressner wrote.

CBS also played up Democrats’ “Trump is a threat to democracy” angle on Sunday, airing a “60 Minutes” special on the Jan. 6 demonstrations hours after Routh tried to kill the former president.

Notorious for working with Harris and her ABC News colleague to attack Trump during last week’s presidential debate, Linsey Davis went straight from reporting on this second attempted assassination to insinuating the former president is to blame for alleged “threats” of “violence” in Springfield, Ohio. Davis labeled allegations of Haitian nationals in the city eating residents’ pets as “baseless rumors.”

Davis’ segment came hours after CNN’s Dana Bash tried to blame Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, for alleged threats being made against Springfield after Vance publicized residents’ claims that third-world migrants are eating waterfowl, dogs, and cats.

Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky and Mia McCarthy went with the media’s classic “Republicans pounce!” framing by authoring an article headlined, “Republicans outraged over possible assassination attempt: ‘They are going to keep trying to kill Trump.’”

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump penned a column lamenting that Routh’s bid to eliminate Trump offers the former president “[a]nother chance …to frame Democrats as dangerous.”

Some hack-tivists have taken their hatred for Trump even further by seemingly arguing the former president bears responsibility for the attempted assassination. During a Sunday segment, MSNBC’s Alex Witt asked her guest if she thinks the Trump campaign will start “toning down the rhetoric” and “toning down the violence.”

“Do you expect there to be calls from within the Trump campaign to do that?” questioned Witt. “Because he will reach out to his supporters and say, ‘Let’s take this down.’ We do not know the source of any gunshots or gunshots. We do not know who is responsible for this. The whole thing has yet to be 100 percent confirmed from start to finish how this all played out.” 

A letter to the editor published by the editors of the Cincinnati Enquirer — part of the USA Today Network — was much more direct in blaming Trump for Routh’s attempted assassination. In the letter, titled “Trump brings these assassination attempts on himself,” author Felicia Duncan argued that while “[t]here is no place in politics for violence,” Trump “brings a lot of this stuff on himself.”

“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,” Duncan wrote.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood