Democrats and corporate media keep getting away with it. What they’re getting away with is inciting violence -- against Donald Trump, first and foremost. Two assassination attempts didn’t happen in a void. Trump didn’t provoke Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh to try to kill him, despite Lester Holt’s spin. Holt’s broadside is predictable: project blame -- in this case, blame the victim. Democrats and their media watercarriers refuse to accept responsibility for wrongs, even when the proof is hiding in plain sight.

Wrote Buck Sexton, via X, September 16:

Problem the Democrats have run into – again -- is they cannot say “this person is as bad as Hitler” and then in the next breath say “I disavow violence against this person who is as bad as Hitler”

They want the political benefit of false demonization without the blowback of it

Other than spasms of outrage by conservative commentators, what blowback do Democrats and their media allies suffer? Nothing of any real consequence. Sure, they want the “political benefit of false demonization,” but not much stops them from pursuing it, and if that doesn’t work?

Demonization is meant to end Trump, regardless the means. The rhetoric is designed to paint Trump as not merely objectionable, but demonic. Should he recapture the presidency, his enemies say, apocalypse will ensue. Here’s a clip of Democrats speaking up for political violence aimed at the former president. Said an ex-FBI agent on CNN, Routh was “spurred on by much of the political diatribes that are going on these days talking about Trump, equating him to Hitler[.]”

Tarring Trump as Hitler didn’t just start. It’s a charge first made by Hillary Clinton on The View last year. That odd smear has been obediently picked up by others. Per Outkick, the day after the second assassination attempt against Trump, Howard Stern said:

"Hitler was perceived as a clown in Germany [like Trump in the US]. He was one of these buffoonish characters. Then he won an election. And that was the end of Germany."

Got that?

If Trump wins, the end of America is near.

Kamala Harris, in the debate, derided Trump for exchanging “love letters” with Kim Jong-un. Never mind that Trump established a rapport with Kim to avoid another bloody war on the Korean peninsula. Instead, Harris said that Trump likes consorting with dictators. More routinely, Democrats and talking heads drone that Trump intends to demolish democracy. Curious that Trump didn’t take a wrecking ball to it in his term as president. More curious still that Trump’s accusers are fine with lawfare, justify election-year protests riots as righteous (Kamala Harris), and offhandedly dismiss credible evidence of election rigging.

These aren’t stupid people as a rule. They aren’t all in the grips of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Many are calculating cynics. Knocking off Trump politically would satisfy, but if it takes a Crooks or Routh to pick up rifles and shoot him, well, that’s unfortunate, but Trump is a dire threat to democracy, after all. And if Trump is killed, you can bet that the media would throttle into full Lester Holt spin: Trump brought it on himself.

If you think that’s a stretch, did you notice the muted reactions by Democrats and corporate media to the attempts on Trump’s life? Had those attempts been made on Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, had the would-be assassins been MAGA identifiers, the eruption of outrage, the vilification of Trump and his supporters, and calls for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to go after anyone wearing a red cap would have paled any red scare by comparison.

How else can we discern intentions? In the roughly sixty days between Crooks’ attempt on Trump’s life and Houth’s, the vitriol directed at Trump abated for just a few days only to kick up again. Yet, we’re expected to believe that cause and effect are mere correlation. We’re supposed to believe that the lies and slander directed at Trump have no impact on the minds of men twisted by hate. Or in Crooks’ case, perhaps he was driven by a perverse desire to be a hero. Unsparing attacks on Trump by notable Democrats and the media may have led Crooks’ to delude himself that laurels awaited.

No revelation that corporate media makes no serious effort to call out Democrats for the bile they spew at Trump. In fact, the media enables the hatred. Corporate media long ago abandoned its responsibility to journalism. They practice “advocacy journalism,” which is something Marxist professors started pushing at Columbia back in the 1960s. It’s just cover for the work of propagandists. If we had a media that made more than a pretense at impartiality and held Democrats and others to account for smearing Trump as Hitler, then much of the extreme rhetoric would stop. As is, that rhetoric serves as a siren to loons and extremists who are willing to try their hands at killing Trump.

Granted, hot rhetoric isn’t anything new in American politics. But in modern times, there are lines that parties typically don’t cross. Exceptions occur, however, when the country is grappling with big troubles and/or historic choices about the country’s direction.

We’re most certainly at a crossroads today. The nation’s direction is up for grabs. Passions are running high.

The 1930s and 1960s were similar to now in that they were change times. Prior to Franklin Roosevelt taking office, there was an assassination attempt on his life. Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak, who was with FDR, was the assassin’s unintended victim, not unlike Corey Comperatore in Butler, Pennsylvania. The would-be assassin actually “saw Roosevelt as the quintessential capitalist, an uber-capitalist.”

The 1960s really began with the Kennedy assassination. Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency. The civil rights movement was met with violence. Race riots erupted in Watts, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. The counterculture was in full swing. LBJ escalated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which turned unpopular. Antiwar protesters taunted Johnson with the chant: “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” When Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam war, much of the media followed.

So, Trump being targeted for attacks isn’t unprecedented. Haters aren’t new. Malicious souls and provocateurs there have been. And violent men -- mostly men -- aren’t new. Yet the alignment of powerful establishment interests, the Democrat Party, corporate media, and the administrative state to prevent Trump’s election make these times different -- and exceptionally perilous. Not even Lincoln faced so formidable an array of opponents.

Elites are playing for keeps, and that makes them dangerous. Transforming America isn’t hyperbole. They mean to fundamentally change the country, whether Americans believe it right and good or not. Their worldview is antithetical to the very principles that made a liberty revolution and founded this country. Above all, these elites mean to keep power in their hands. They’re deadly serious about it.

Donald Trump is right again. Said he: “In the end, they're not coming after me. They're coming after you -- and I'm just standing in their way.”

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

Image: AT via Magic Studio