A thought experiment:Claude suggests What we might see if the New York Times weren’t hyper partisan
Make no mistake: The ideas that apparently inspired Cole Tomas Allen — who is accused of attempting to assassinate the President of the United States at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last Saturday — are virtually indistinguishable from mainstream Democratic rhetoric.
"Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy," Democratic politicians have said, in one form or another, for years. He is a "fascist." He is comparable to Hitler. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris compared Trump to Hitler and explicitly called him a "fascist" during the 2024 race. Representative Jasmine Crockett called Trump a "wannabe Hitler." Hillary Clinton said Trump was "reenacting" a 1939 Nazi rally. Then-President Joe Biden accused Trump of using "Hitler's language."
Representative Ted Lieu of California has repeatedly promoted the charge that the president raped children. These are not fringe voices. These are sitting and former members of Congress, presidential candidates, and party leaders.
Allen's manifesto, written minutes before the attack, declared: "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." He also wrote: "I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done."
Hours after the shooting, no prominent Democratic politician stood before cameras to ask whether their own language had contributed to this. They did not need to. The words in that manifesto — pedophile, rapist, traitor, fascist, Hitler — are the precise words their party has been broadcasting for years.
Democratic politicians aside, there is also the vast apparatus of left-leaning cable news and social media. The phrase "pedophile, rapist, and traitor" is so commonplace in liberal circles that it appears across social media platforms, on t-shirts, in op-eds, and in the commentary of talk show hosts and members of Congress. Allen had an account on Bluesky, where such language flows freely and daily.
Democratic strategist James Carville compared Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally. Democratic strategist Aisha Mills claimed on CNN that Trump "revered the Nazis, revered Hitler." These are not obscure bloggers. These are the party's most prominent voices, given prime airtime on the nation's major networks.
The point of making this connection is not to say that any individual Democratic politician or cable news host pulled the trigger. But the attempt on the President's life at the Correspondents' Dinner is the third such incident in under two years. A man attempted to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. An ICE facility was attacked. Charlie Kirk was killed. A pattern is visible to anyone willing to look at it honestly
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it plainly: "The entire Democrat Party has made their pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist and that they compare him to Hitler. These are despicable statements that the American people have been consuming for years, and so many mentally perturbed individuals are led to believe these words are truth, and then are inspired to act on it."
Some of the politicians who traffic in this language do so cynically. They know Trump is not literally Hitler. They know he is not a pedophile in any documented sense. They know these are not factual descriptions but rhetorical weapons — designed to raise money, mobilize voters, and win power. When the words metastasize in a troubled mind into a conviction that violence is not just justified but morally required, the architects of that language will express shock and grief. They will say the shooter was mentally ill. They will say no connection can be drawn.
But the words in Cole Allen's manifesto did not come from nowhere. They came from years of a political and media ecosystem that told its audience, day after day, that the President of the United States was not a political opponent to be defeated — but a monster to be stopped by any means necessary.
In American history, it would not be the first time that dehumanizing rhetoric, deployed for political gain, produced consequences its authors preferred not to own.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Hours after the shooting, no prominent Democratic politician stood before cameras to ask whether their own language had contributed to this. They did not need to. The words in that manifesto — pedophile, rapist, traitor, fascist, Hitler — are the precise words their party has been broadcasting for years.
I asked Claude to write an editorial for the NYT based on how they've approached incidents where they blamed Republican rhetoric for violence. I'm sure the unbiased NYT will publish something along these lines any minute now.....
Donald Trump has insulted HUNDREDS of people, by name , in his social media over the past 10 years. No one has ever seen anything like it before. He sounds like a man who likes to make enemies.
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Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memorial Distill His Politics: ‘I Hate My Opponent’ - The New York Times
Completely missing the point, John.
That is your opinion.
People have been watching Trump ruin our country for more than ten years. It puts a certain type of person on edge.
Sorry can't help myself, what type of person are you referring to?
Maybe, maybe not. And the call to arms from so many democrats puts this type of person over the edge.
So you're back to "he said mean things and it made me cry"?
Rhetoric of all kinds has come from all directions, but the bullets are only coming in from one direction.
The left had us in ruin. Trump will be regarded as the savior of the nation.
Coo-coo.
It is coming.
IT is here. Fucking clowns.
Such incredible delusional it's hard to even know where to start. It's truly shocking to see how some people apparently just love a lying known sexual predator, convicted felon who cheated on all three of his wives and is an accused child rapist. It's hard to fathom how some people can have their heads twisted so far backwards as to actually believe Trump is their savior. It's just astounding how stupid or deluded one would have to be to believe such a laughably moronic idea.
Hakeem Jeffries even doubled down on his call for "maximum warfare."
Here Claude going full Krugman based on him attacking Pre Trump Republicans:
. Calling a politician's policies dangerous is legitimate. Calling the politician a child rapist and a Nazi who must be stopped by any means is something else entirely. Criticism is not the same as incitement. But incitement dressed in the language of moral emergency — that is precisely what has saturated our airwaves and timelines.
Where is that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance here. It is coming, overwhelmingly, from the left. It's hard to imagine a Republican member of Congress repeatedly promoting the claim that the President rapes children without being ostracized; but Representative Ted Lieu has done exactly that, and faces no consequences within his party. Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist while serving as Vice President. Hillary Clinton compared his rallies to Nazi events. Governor JB Pritzker compared immigration enforcement to Hitler rounding up Jews. These are not backbench provocateurs. These are the party's leading figures.
And then there is the media apparatus that amplifies and legitimizes this language daily. Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, and their colleagues have spent years presenting to their audiences not a president they disagree with, but a monster — an existential threat to human decency who by implication cannot be permitted to continue. The phrase "threat to democracy" is used so routinely it has lost all meaning except one: that normal democratic processes are insufficient to stop him.
Of course, these hosts and politicians are responding to what their audiences want to hear. There is a market for anyone willing to stoke that particular terror. But even if fear and hatred are what their audiences demand, that doesn't excuse those who supply it. They should be held to account by all decent people.
So will the attack at the Correspondents' Dinner prompt some real soul-searching? It's up to Democratic leaders now. Will they accept the reality of what their rhetoric has helped produce, and take a stand against the dehumanizing language that turns troubled minds toward violence? Or will they dismiss Cole Allen as merely a deranged individual — completely unconnected to the political atmosphere they have spent years constructing — and go on exactly as before?
No
No
Yes. And they will use what they helped create to argue for gun control.
It was she who told her hate filled audience that she needed to read up on Hitler to understand Trump. Do the feebleminded indoctrinated people who are graduating college understand what Hitler did? Do they even understand what their own teachers did to them?
One person we haven't mentioned is Hasan Piker, the new icon of the American left.
Perhaps we might need an article devoted to him alone?
Another person we should mention is the unfunny hater Jimmy Kimmel.
Jimmy Kimmel made the remark on his late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! , during a parody of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 23, 2026, just two days before the actual dinner event. In the segment, he introduced Melania Trump by saying, “Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow” and further joked about her birthday, suggesting she would celebrate quietly at home, reflecting on her life choices.
The First Lady responded:
It is on ABC now.
As I said , Trump has insulted hundreds of people, by name, in his social media over the past ten years, has joked about Nancy Pelosi's 80 year old husband being hit in the head with a hammer, has said that various opponents of his should face the death penalty over imaginary offenses, etc.
Trumps sun is setting, more and more people have opened their eyes to his malignant thought processes. I dont think Kimmel's joke about Trumps advancing age was particularly funny, but it is just a grain of sand in the ocean of vileness that Trump has more than done his share to create.
And as I said, the bullets are coming from one direction. Shouldn't that concern you more than an insult???
Trumps sun is setting, more and more people have opened their eyes to his malignant thought processes.
Trump is in his second & final term. He is doing what he promised to do. Whether or not he gets to live through the last 2 years, historians will give him the credit he deserves just for what he has accomplished thus far.
I dont think Kimmel's joke about Trumps advancing age was particularly funny, but it is just a grain of sand in the ocean of vileness that Trump has more than done his share to create.
Kimmel never said, "advancing age." Most of us thought he was referring to assassination. Your attempt to defend him is duly noted.
Excellent article.
Please rename this article. You do not have an inside scoop from the NYT, and in fact, the title is a total misrepresentation. If you do not change the title, I will be forced to lock the article.
I thought the idea of the New York Times running an editorial that held democrats to the same standards they hold republicans to was so preposterous it didn’t need explaining.
Sean,
Did they run it? If so, use that as your title. If they have not run it, then change your title, since it is nothing more than a supposition, and one that this site will be liable for.
I wonder who else compared Trump to Hitler. The irony.
Yes, they tried to assassinate Hitler, glad to see Trump avoided being assassinated as well. Hopefully Trump can emulate his white nationalist hero and find a similar fate in store for himself someday.
You mean they aren't hyper partisan?
I always found this rhetoric funny. "Trump is a threat to democracy" yet its the democrats that carry out everything they accuse Trump of carrying out.
In a nutshell he bought into the lefts gaslighting and acted like a good little dipshit.
...
And it's that rhetoric that has lead 10 years of investigations that amounted to nothing, to 3 assassination attempts, and failure after failure of the left / democrats.