Murder-Inciting Demagoguery
Podcaster and former CNN host Don Lemon claims it is “false equivalence” to compare “Democrats saying Trump is terrible for this country” to “Trump standing in front of a crowd on January 6th and telling them to march to the Capitol and fight like hell.”
IN FACT, Democrats have incessantly spread falsehoods that can inspire people to commit murder by misleading them to believe that their very lives are in danger, while Trump told the J6 crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Here are the specifics:
- In the months leading up to the 2024 shooting of Donald Trump and the killing of Corey Comperatore, hundreds of media outlets and Democrat officials alleged that Trump threatened lethal violence because he said, “If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.”
- In reality, the 38-second clip of what Trump said clearly shows that he used the term “bloodbath” to describe the effects of Biden’s policies, particularly on “car manufacturing,” not as a violent threat.
- Auguring sentiments that animated mass murderers who carried out school shootings and the person who is incriminated in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, leading Democrats have repeatedly accused Republicans of killing children by banning the use of surgeries and drugs to transgender them.
- In reality, no credible evidence shows that such practices save lives, and scientific journals document that they cause significant bodily harms and may cause mental harms as well.
- A slew of prominent Democrats have called Trump a fascist while alleging that he promised to “be a dictator on day one,” vilified “migrants” as “animals,” praised “white supremacists” as “very fine people,” spewed “Nazi” rhetoric about a “Unified Reich,” and declared “war against American citizens.”
- In reality, all of those accusations are derived from quotes that were taken grossly out of context.
- Using rhetoric that provoked the slayings of at least 10 police officers and likely spurred thousands of other murders, leading media outlets like the New York Times have published claims that white people and police officers “disproportionately” murder black people and see them as “expendable figures on the urban landscape.”
- In reality, black people are 2 to 3 times more likely to murder white people than vice-versa, and police are more likely to fatally shoot whites than blacks given how frequently each group engages in actions that warrant the use of lethal force.
- Prestigious scholars have accused Republicans and fossil fuel executives of murdering millions of people through climate change.
- In reality, wide-ranging climate-related measures have remained stable or improved for the past 30–170 years, such as hurricane frequency & intensity, floods & droughts, forest mass & tree cover, foliage productivity, coral reef island area, mainland coastal area, extinctions, agricultural production, weather fatalities, and weather economic damages.
- Multitudes of Democrats and journalists have accused Trump of inciting a deadly “insurrection” because he told his supporters on J6 to “fight like hell.”
- In reality, the transcript of Trump’s speech shows that he told his supporters to go “to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” repeatedly used the work “fight” in the context of legal and verbal fighting (not violence), none of the J6 protestors were charged with murder or attempted murder, and the DC Medical Examiner found that the fatalities on J6 were natural or accidental, except for the killing of Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol Police officer.
When people openly criticize each other — a common occurrence in politics — there’s always a chance that a third party will use those words as a license for violence.
On the other hand, countless misdeeds wouldn’t be exposed and stopped were it not for public criticism. Even in cases where such critiques provoke lethal violence, more lives may be saved than if the critics remained silent and let the wrongs continue. This is a major purpose of the First Amendment.
Under legal standards, critics are not generally liable for violent actions provoked by their words. However, the legal and moral case for blame arises if they make direct calls for violence or maliciously or recklessly mislead others to believe that certain people pose a serious threat to their lives.
Yet, prominent Democrats, media outlets, and scholars have persistently spread falsehoods that could inspire murder by misleading people to believe that they will be slain unless they strike first.
Many people say this is a two-sided affair, but the left-leaning ChatGPT failed to produce a single legitimate example of murder-inciting demagoguery from leading Republicans or conservatives.
