Former CNN political analyst Christopher Cillizza has publicly criticized his former network, Democrats and others for downplaying the recent assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump. Cillizza expressed strong frustration with both the media and political circles for minimizing the seriousness of these threats.
Cillizza’s comments followed a troubling series of events, including two assassination attempts on former President Trump within the last 90 days. The most recent attempt involved 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, who, according to Trump, was driven by what Trump described as the “inflammatory language” of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Trump told Fox News that he views both Harris and Walz as a “bigger threat to democracy,” citing Routh’s political views that depicted Trump as a “threat to democracy.”
Cillizza didn’t shy away from addressing the seriousness of political violence in the U.S. “I think it is so stupid and counterproductive to spend time trying to downplay the fact that the guy, two times there have been people trying to kill him over the last 90 days,” Cillizza said, in a no-nonsense takedown of those attempting to minimize the assassination attempts. He emphasized that, regardless of one’s political affiliation or beliefs, violence should never be a means to achieve political ends and ought to be roundly condemned by everyone.
“We are not a country in which political violence can be condoned. And just because Donald Trump helped incite January 6th does not make two rights, two wrongs equally right,” he claimed, though Trump clearly did not because he told his rally crowd to march “peacefully” to the Capitol that day.
“It does not matter if it’s Democrat or Republican or Independent or Green or Libertarian. It should not matter that it is Donald Trump because we believe that this is not a good thing or at least we should,” he said. “The way that you defeat someone who you disagree with politically is you go vote. You beat them at the ballot box.”
Cillizza also took aim at efforts to downplay the severity of the assassination attempts. He criticized those who dismissed the incidents, arguing that such attitudes are dragging U.S. political discourse to dangerously low levels. “Once we start saying, well yeah, I mean it might have been a piece of glass, or he didn’t even get shot, we are bringing ourselves way down, way down to a place that we don’t want to be as a nation.”
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