'Brazen gaslighting': JD Vance slammed for telling Dems 'tone down the rhetoric'

17 September 2024

Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance published a 1203-word diatribe Monday night filled with falsehoods and feeble hypocrisies, demanding that Democrats “tone down the rhetoric” while insisting he opposes “censorship.” Critics are accusing the GOP vice presidential nominee of hypocrisy and gaslighting the public, given his and his running mate’s lies about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets, and Donald Trump’s vicious attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, which mirror what Vance is urging Democrats to not do.

“Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf,” Vance alleged in his post on X, before reaching this dramatic conclusion: “The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.”

That’s how Vance’s screed ended. But it began with a falsehood: “Yesterday, Donald J. Trump nearly lost his life.”

He was referring to the alleged attempted assassination on Sunday, during which a 58-year old man who voted for Trump in 2016 before publicly expressing his regret and supporting Republican Nikki Haley this year, was found by a Secret Service agent outside the perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course, 300 to 500 feet away from the ex-president, with an AK-47. The agent shot at the suspect, who had been waiting in the bushes for about 12 hours.

“Ryan Wesley Routh did not fire any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and sped away after an agent who spotted him shot in his direction, officials said. He was arrested in a neighboring county,” NBC South Florida reported.

And while this second alleged assassination attempt, once again by a GOP voter, is disturbing, Trump did not nearly lose his life anymore than he “took a bullet for democracy,” as he claimed after the first assassination attempt.

And yet Vance wrote, “The rhetoric is out of control. It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed a few years ago. It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice” – a clear attack on Democrats despite both alleged attempted shooters targeting Trump were his own supporters, at least at one time. As for the Scalise shooting in 2017, seven years ago, the perpetrator had a 20-year history of run-ins with the police, including an arrest “after a 2006 incident in which he was accused of beating his foster daughter, according to court records. The case crumbled after the victim decided not to testify,” Bloomberg reported. Had he been convicted he would have been unable to own a gun.

Vance also claimed that “Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed, and used the exact same phrase.”

NCRM could find no news reports making the claim Routh has said that, but you know who has? The American people.

“Americans agree that the future of democracy is on the line in the 2024 election but disagree about who poses the biggest threat,” is the headline of a December PBS News report.

“A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 62% of adults say democracy in the U.S. could be at risk depending on who wins next fall. Majorities of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (55%) feel the same way, but for different reasons.”

Vance also promoted the claim – again, nowhere to be found in news reports NCRM could find – that, he says, “suggest [the bomb threats] came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.”

It is the same suggestion made, apparently without public proof or substance, by Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine and Attorney General Dave Yost, also citing no source.

As for the bomb threats, Governor DeWine announced Monday there had been 33 since Donald Trump and JD Vance made their wild accusations that Haitian immigrants (20,000 “illegal” migrants they falsely claimed) are stealing and eating the cats and dogs of Springfield residents. 33 affecting 22 facilities including elementary schools and hospitals that were forced to be evacuated, shuttered, or searched.

Somehow, Vance and the GOP are claiming that the bomb threats coming from overseas (not proven) absolve them of any guilt. It does not. The bomb threats are a direct result of Vance’s and Trump’s lies attacking immigrants, which in turn are a hallmark of Donald Trump’s political career since he came down the golden Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and told the American people their problems are being caused by Mexicans.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said on the June day when he launched his first presidential run. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people.”

And while Vance is demanding Democrats “tone down the rhetoric,” he ignores the words of his running mate, Donald Trump, who just last week repeatedly called Vice President Harris “a threat to democracy,” in a speech before the Fraternal Order of Police.

Meanwhile, civil rights and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler blasted Vance’s massive social media post, calling it a “a fascist manifesto,” in which, she writes, the Ohio Senator argues “that false claims dehumanizing migrants is opinion the censorship of which will lead to violence, but Harris’ factual observations about Trump’s coup attempt is violence.”

Posting a screenshot, Wheeler sardonically remarked that his post “starts by feigning to care about incendiary speech, but ultimately says you have to let his Nazi buddies lie about Haitians eating kitties.”

Because it was a lie, a lie that Vance admitted to when he told CNN on Sunday he will “create stories” to promote his agenda: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

National security attorney Brad Moss debunked Vance’s public remarks Monday in which the Senator claimed, “You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out.”

Former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman summed up Vance’s remarks, asking, “So if I understand the new MAGA messaging correctly; quoting Trump and Vance’s actual words they have said on the record multiple times is inciting violence?”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson also slammed Vance, writing: “All your gifts, wasted on a dissolute con man, a rapist, serial adulterer, a bankrupt wastrel, and an eager authoritarian who has stoked more violence, hatred, division, death, and chaos than any President in modern history. You, sir, are the cause of death and bomb threats happening *this instant* in Ohio and you elide your guilt with the grace of a Harvard law grad. Spare me.”

CNN host W. Kamau Bell blasted Vance’s remarks on Monday:

“This reads like your daddy Trump yelled at you & told you to make it right. You had an all-time debacle of an interview yesterday where all you had to say was ‘I’m sorry to my home state. As an elected official it is my responsibility to fact check the things I say.’ & today more bomb threats came into the schools that your constituents send their kids to. You talk about Democratic ‘rhetoric’ like your daddy didn’t lead an attack on a the Capitol. Well, since you said we are allowed to say mean things, let me say this, you are a disgrace.”

Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Folman added, “What brazen gaslighting from JD Vance, who literally led the way on incitement blaming Dems for the shooting in Pennsylvania — ‘They even tried to kill him’ This BS rhetoric [was] repeated by Vance and many top Trump surrogates.”

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough Tuesday morning called Vance’s speech in which he called for Democrats to tone down the rhetoric, “gaslighting of the first order.”

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