As the nation reels from a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, many conservatives are pointing an accusatory finger at the media for their role in radicalizing much of the political left. The alleged attempted assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, posted on X in 2024 of this year that “democracy” was “on the ballot” — a line that Democrats and their corporate media allies have been chanting for almost a year.
Back in 2019 when a lone gunman opened fire on Wal-Mart customers in El Paso, Texas, journalists started kicking around a fun new phrase to blame Trump for the bloodshed: “stochastic terrorism,” or the notion that one can incite political violence without ever explicitly calling for it.
In so many words, the claim back then was Trump intentionally caused the shooting by stoking tensions over illegal immigration. Supposed “experts” on this brand new phenomenon, like former Obama Assistant DHS Secretary-turned-CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem, began preaching to audiences on CNN and MSNBC that Trump was deliberately engaging in stochastic terrorism.
Sounds serious! If Trump’s rhetoric about real crimes committed by illegal aliens was enough to inspire mass murder, then what might result from, for example, every major left-leaning media outlet engaging in a sustained, eight-year-long hate campaign to convince America that Donald Trump was the second coming of Hitler?
Might that inspire some lunatics to take action?
For once, let’s hold the media to their own standards. If Trump and JD Vance are responsible for supposed bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, then every single person working for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC is to blame both for what unfolded this past weekend, and for the shooting two months ago in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The journalists can’t have it both ways. If anyone in the media wants to accuse Trump (or any Republican) of “stochastic terrorism” ever again, they’d better first offer a heartfelt apology for intentionally inciting two psychopaths to try to kill a presidential candidate.
