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12 Examples of Public Calls for Violence Against Trump-More Ryan Routh

Robert De Niro, 'Morning Joe' Scarborough-10 more examples of higher-profile figures making statements about risk of Trump as a 'dictator.'

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Video still of actor Rober De Niro Denouncing Trump as a 'Threat to Democracy' one of numbers of such examples, Credit X. Developments in Ryan Wesley Routh Purported Attempted Trump Shooter Case; collage by L.A. "Tony" Kovach for the Patch.
Video still of actor Rober De Niro Denouncing Trump as a 'Threat to Democracy' one of numbers of such examples, Credit X. Developments in Ryan Wesley Routh Purported Attempted Trump Shooter Case; collage by L.A. "Tony" Kovach for the Patch. (Actor Robert De Niro Denouncing Trump as a 'Threat to Democracy' Credit X-Developments in Ryan Wesley Routh Arrest Case LATonyKovach-Patch)

To objectively understand the environment that exists in the United States (U.S.) that led to two known 2024 apparently attempted assassination attempts in about two months, it is useful to step back and see the rhetoric and some related history. Note that one of the reports that follows indicates multiple other arrests have been made of individuals who threatened the 45th President of the United States (POTUS) Donald J. Trump. So, the total number of attempted cases of threats or violance against Trump is not clearly known to the public.

Pundit Benny Johnson, commenting on left-leaning MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough’s rant posted the video that went with this quote on X (see that further below along with other examples).

“‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough goes on UNHINGED Anti-Trump RANT: “He will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country. Just look at his past. It’s not really hard to read” But according to a news release on the Secret Service website, during the large, violent demonstrations around the White House, only one arrest was made.

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But was “Morning Joe” Scarborough exaggerating or worse? Some history sheds light on the claim by Scarborough, who as a ‘newsman’ should have known better. Here is but one example that is publicly available at the U.S. Secret Service website at this link here.

Part I

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Secret Service Statement on Pennsylvania Avenue Demonstrations

Published By

U.S. Secret Service Media Relations

Published Date

2020-05-31

Washington, D.C. -- On Saturday, May 30, and into early Sunday, May 31, 2020, U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers made one arrest during the demonstrations near 15th St. NW and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some demonstrators repeatedly attempted to knock over security barriers, and vandalized six Secret Service vehicles. Between Friday night and Sunday morning, more than 60 Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers and Special Agents sustained multiple injuries from projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items. Secret Service personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched, and exposed to bodily fluids. A total of 11 injured employees were transported to a local hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.

No individuals crossed the White House Fence and no Secret Service protectees were ever in any danger.

The Secret Service respects the right to assemble, and we ask that individuals do so peacefully for the safety of all.”

Let’s sum that up.

11 injured were taken to the hospital, 60 uniformed and special agents were injured, property was damage, and only one arrest per that release. Where was the dictatorial like response that Scarborough, Robert De Niro and others have ranted about? More on that in the analysis that will follow in Part IV, but these are arguably examples of projecting on to their political rivals what they are doing or planning themselves.

Part II

The following is courtesy of the Daily Signal.

Analysis

12 Influencers Who Called for Violence Against Trump, Called Him an ‘Existential Threat to Democracy’

Tyler O'Neil | September 16, 2024

Ahead of the second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, many influential actors, journalists, and influencers warned that Trump is an “existential threat” to democracy, compared him to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, and suggested he or his supporters should face violent attacks. Some continued attacking Trump even after the first assassination attempt July 13.

The New Tolerance Campaign, a nonprofit watchdog aimed at confronting “intolerance double standards” practiced by “establishment institutions, civil rights groups, universities, and socially conscious brands,” compiled a list of extreme rhetoric against Trump that may have contributed to the second assassination attempt.

“New Tolerance Campaign research has shown two kinds of consistent and consistently charged rhetoric surrounding President Trump: insistence that his reelection would lead to the collapse of the country, and calls for the former president’s death,” Gregory T. Angelo, New Tolerance Campaign’s president, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Monday. (New Tolerance Campaign has taken to exposing extremism on the Left, to balance the impact of left-leaning groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center.)

“These proclamations aren’t sarcastic; they’re literal, and they’re being spoken by high-profile politicians and members of the mainstream media with massive audiences,” Angelo added. “It’s shocking that there have been two attempts on President Trump’s life, but not surprising given the existential hyperbole about him pounding Americans’ ears day in and day out.”

Other Violent Threats to Trump

Both Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who authorities say shot Trump in the right ear July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, and Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, the man suspected of planning to assassinate the former president Sunday at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, got surprisingly close to the former president.

However, New Tolerance Campaign identified five others who faced charges for threatening to harm or kill Trump.

In January 2021, a judge sentenced 53-year-old Connecticut resident Gary Joseph Gravelle to nine years in prison after his conviction for sending a letter threatening to kill Trump in September 2018.

In January 2022, police arrested and charged New York City resident Thomas Welnicki, 72, with calling the Secret Service and threatening to kill Trump. He proclaimed that he intended to “stand up to fascism” by assassinating the former president.

In August, police arrested Arizona resident Ronald Lee Syvrud, 66, and charged him with threatening Trump’s life during the former president’s campaign trip to the Copper State.

In July, police arrested and charged Florida resident Michael M. Wiseman, 68, with making written threats to kill Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, after the assassination attempt in Butler.

Last month, police arrested and charged Illinois resident Justin Lee White, 36, with repeatedly threatening Trump, police, and Republicans with violence if the former president didn’t “play fair” during the election campaign.

Where would Welnicki get the idea that standing up to “fascism” involves targeting Trump? The full list of left-leaning pundits, celebrities, and politicians who compared Trump to Hitler would be too long to compile. But New Tolerance Campaign highlighted many examples, and The Daily Signal has narrowed them down to the list below. (The worst is at the bottom.)

None of the people in the list below responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment by publication time.

1. Shalom Auslander

Most Americans may not have heard of novelist Shalom Auslander, 54, but in 2016 he penned an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming that comparing Trump to Hitler “belittles Hitler.”

Auslander first claimed that Hitler had evil plans, while Trump is “just a con man,” but then the novelist suggested that Americans today are “like Hitler’s willing executioners.”

“Will we look the other way, say we didn’t know, stand silently by while millions of our neighbors are rounded up, while women who get abortions are ‘punished,’ while immigrants are given ‘ideology tests’ and our leader heaps praise on oppressive tyrants?” he wrote.

The writer didn’t suggest that Trump would round up Jews and send them to concentration camps, but he did suggest Trump would “round up” Americans’ “neighbors” in a similarly ominous way.

2. Linda Ronstadt

Rock and country singer Linda Ronstadt, then 73, explicitly compared Trump to Hitler in July 2019.

Ronstadt, who is of Mexican descent, recalled that when Trump first announced his candidacy for president, she predicted, “It’s going to be like Hitler, and the Mexicans are the new Jews.”

“And sure enough, that’s what he delivered,” she said. “It’s exactly the same.”

3. Joe Scarborough

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” repeated the line that Trump posed an existential threat to America’s representative form of government.

Scarborough said last November that Trump “is running to end American democracy as we know it.”

“He will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country,” the MSNBC host said of Trump, whom he called an “authoritarian.”

4. Robert Kagan

Also last November, political scientist Robert Kagan argued in The Washington Post that if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election the odds are “pretty good” that his presidency will “turn into a dictatorship.”

Kagan warned that the “Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived.” He suggested that, if elected again, Trump would prevent free and fair elections in 2026.

5. Rachel Maddow

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow compared Trump to both Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Last December, Maddow said Trump “keeps saying the kinds of things, the exact kind of things, that Hitler and Mussolini said.”

“There’s a reason Hitler and Mussolini said this stuff, too. It worked then, it works now,” she added. “It has worked abroad all over the world and yes, it has worked here, too. More than we like to remember.”

6. Will Stancil

Will Stancil, then a candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives for District 61A, posted a suspicious question on the social media site X.

“So is there any reason [Joe] Biden couldn’t just drone strike Trump and end this,” Stancil, who currently has more than 89,000 followers, wrote in January. He then deleted the post.

This post arguably fits with an extremely negative view of those whom Stancil considers Trump’s supporters.

Stancil’s campaign platform stated that the candidate is “committed to listening to voices across the political spectrum—with a key exception.”

“For over a century, far-right extremists have not been motivated by sincere ideological belief but an inner desire to commit violence, dominate the weak, bully the unpopular, and mock the unusual,” his platform read. “Their policy commitments are typically insincere or even nonexistent; their motive force is the pleasure they take in causing pain.”

7. Keith Olbermann

In March, Trump said that the “hostile press” treats him worse than Abraham Lincoln. The Biden-Harris reelection campaign posted Trump’s clip, noting: “Trump says he has been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated.”

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann reposted the Biden-Harris campaign video, saying, “There’s always the hope.”

Olbermann deleted the tweet and clarified that he hoped Trump gets treated badly, although his original post could be interpreted to mean that he hoped Trump got assassinated.

“I’m hoping Trump’s right, that he IS treated worse than Lincoln,” Olbermann said. “As I’ve said for 9 years: THAT HE’S CONVICTED, THEN DIES IN PRISON.”

8. Robert De Niro

In May, actor Robert De Niro echoed Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address by warning that “under Trump,” America’s current “kind of government will perish from the Earth.”

“If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted,” the actor declared in a speech outside the building where Trump’s controversial trial for falsifying business records was taking place.

“And elections, forget about it. That’s over,” De Niro told reporters. “That’s done. If he gets in, I can tell. you right now, he will never leave. He will never leave. You know that.”

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) May" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/MJTruthUlt... 28, 2024

The month after the first Trump assassination attempt, on July 13, saw more extreme rhetoric.

9. Jacqueline Marsaw

A former congressional aide for Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., posted on Facebook that a potential Trump assassin should try not to miss “next time.”

“I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time ooops that wasn’t me talking,” Jacqueline Marsaw wrote in the post.

Thompson said he fired Marsaw. His office didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request to connect with Marsaw for comment after the second assassination attempt.

10. Randi Weingarten

At the opening of the American Federation of Teachers convention in mid-July, AFT President Randi Weingarten condemned Trump as an “existential threat to democracy.”
Weingarten, head of the nation’s second-largest teachers union, spoke more than a week after the assassination attempt on the former president in Pennsylvania.

11. Billie Joe Armstrong

Billie Joe Armstrong, the 52-year-old lead singer of the rock band Green Day, lifted a Trump mask that many critics described as a “decapitated head” during a concert in Washington, D.C.
The mask had the word “idiot” scrawled on it.


12. Steven ‘Destiny’ Bonnell

Steven Kenneth Bonnell II, a 35-year-old influencer who goes by the name “Destiny” and gained a large audience by livestreaming video games on YouTube, said he did not have “much sympathy” for Trump supporters after the first assassination attempt.

“I don’t think I have much sympathy about the attempt enough to chastise people celebrating it,” he said.

Bonnell stood by this statement after English journalist Piers Morgan pressed him on it.

...##

The balance of that article from the Daily Signal is linked here as a word shown that violates Patch standards is quoted in an X post.

Part III

Courtesy of the Center Square.

Suspected Trump assassin left long trail in court records, online

(The Center Square) – Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump during a round of golf on Sunday, was camped out on the golf course with a rifle and a bag of food for nearly 12 hours before being spotted.

Routh, who is registered to vote in both Hawaii and North Carolina, faces federal charges of possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Routh worked [as] a builder in a suburb of Honolulu.

On top of the federal gun charges, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday the state has the jurisdiction to prosecute Routh for attempted murder. If convicted on that charge, Routh could face life in prison.

Online, Routh portrayed himself as an international freedom fighter who voted for Trump in 2016 before writing a self-published book in 2023 urging Iran to assassinate Trump.

He told news media he spent months in Ukraine working to bring foreign fighters in from Afghanistan. It's not clear if he ever got anyone to sign up for that plan.

Routh was active for a time on Twitter, the social media company now known as X. In 2020, he posted that he voted for Trump in 2016, but was disappointed.

"@realDonaldTrump While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving;" he wrote, "are you retarded; I will be glad when you gone."

In his 2023 book, "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," Routh wrote that Iran was free "to assassinate Trump." The book said Trump's decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal was a "tremendous blunder." Routh referred to Trump as a "buffoon" and a "fool" for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

In a brief interview with CNN, Oran Routh, the suspect's son, called his father "loving and caring" and an "honest, hardworking man," the outlet reported.

"Ryan is my father, and I don’t have any comment beyond a character profile of him as a loving and caring father, and honest, hardworking man. I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent. He’s a good father, and a great man, and I hope you can portray him in an honest light," Oran Routh said on Sunday.

One of Routh's neighbors in the Honolulu suburb of Kaaawa said he was "a very good neighbor" while another called him a "creep," KITV4 Island News reported.

[The charging document vs. Routh is linked below.]

https://bloximages.newyork1.vi...

##

More on Routh in the report linked here and below.

Part IV - Analysis in Brief

What the above reveals in part are examples of how individuals and organizations can harmonize a claim and make it seem true, even though it is NOT true. To learn more about the methods used by some to manipulate the public, see the report linked below.

Deception & Misdirection-3 Tricks-Paltering, Posturing and Projecting

There are absolutely people of good will across the political spectrum. There are also people of ill will across the political spectrum.

That is why the report linked above and below. There must be both civil discourse and a willingness to consider the evidence for or against a candidate.

What Pastors, Priests, Religious Leaders and People Must Do - or Else

Our society has become complex in some ways, but part of the solution is to learn why and how manipulation of large parts of the public occurs. Check them out and share them with your circle, because our future as a more peaceful society may depend on it. ###

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L. A. "Tony" Kovach, multiple award winner in history, including the coveted Lottinville Award from the University of Oklahoma as a freshman. I'm keen on affordable housing, among other issues. We live in Winter Haven FL.
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