On Tuesday, CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today continued to show disgust with how former President Trump’s reacted to the second assassination attempt on his life in as many months, calling on him (and not the left or themselves, for that matter) to ease “heightened tensions” and “calm things down” instead of espousing “growing anger”. In the latter’s case, they even lumped in Trump’s family and loved ones being angry at having nearly lost the former President with divisive rhetoric.
NBC’s chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander huffed about Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris “return[ing[ to the road comes amid these heightened tensions in the political season with new calls today to calm things down.”
He then kvetched that Trump wasn’t “call[ing] for unity” but instead “blaming his political opponents” and specifically telling Marc Thiessen that “the rhetoric from the Democrats is making the bullets fly.”
Alexander painted President Biden and Harris as the true angels in this story and above the fray: “In the wake of the apparent assassination attempt against former President Trump, President Biden and Vice President Harris are urging all Americans to lower the temperature, forcefully condemning political violence.”
Alexander contrasted that propaganda with “Trump…not backing down from inflammatory rhetoric, telling Fox News that President Biden and Harris are ‘people that want to destroy our country. It's called the enemy from within. They are the real threat,’ he said.”
The Saturday Today co-host also threw jabs at GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance and X owner Elon Musk as a way of suggesting the right is the side who has a rhetoric problem (click “expand”):
ALEXNADER: Trump's running mate JD Vance blaming the left for provoking violence.
VANCE: No one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months and two people now have tried to kill Doanld Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to take – tone down their rhetoric.
ALEXANDER: And the White House quickly slammed Elon Musk's recent comments as irresponsible after his weekend post on X appearing to question why no one has even “tr[ied] to assassinate” President Biden or Harris. Musk later deleted the post and said it was a joke. A top Republican, Senator Mitt Romney, also calling for calm.
SENATOR MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): Over the weekend, I saw that President Trump suggested he hated Taylor Swift. I think cooling down the rhetoric would be a good thing on both sides.
ALEXANDER: That came after Trump Sunday morning, Trump declared “I hate Taylor Swift” on his social media site, just days after the superstar endorsed Harris in an Instagram post to her 284 million followers…Trump's voter registration pitch included an attack on the VP, accusing Harris, who is half black, of killing the legacy of black and Hispanic voters[.]
CBS also showed zero shame. Immediately after anti-Trump correspondent and author Robert Costa shared that “Trump family members and friends and advisers – they’re angry and wonder if Trump is safe,” co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson tied this genuine reaction anyone would have someone they cared about was nearly killed to a toxic political climate.
“And that growing anger is already spilling out on the campaign trail including comments by Trump's running mate, JD Vance, where he appears to use what happened in Florida to fire up the supporters,” said Burleson.
Usually promoting abortion or Trump as a threat to democracy and poll workers, correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns told viewers Trump wasn’t “changing any plans, and he is continuing his campaign as usual, but he is adding to his messaging, blaming Vice President Kamala Harris for what happened on Sunday.”
“On Monday, the former President said that Harris and President Biden's rhetoric is, ‘causing me to be shot at,’ and his running mate, JD Vance, echoed that sentiment while on the campaign trail in Georgia yesterday,” she added as a lead-in to an identical soundbite from NBC on Vance.
She too painted Democrats as the adults in the room: “Now, Biden and Harris have denounced the violence, and Harris said, ‘everyone must do their part to make sure this incident doesn't lead to more violence.’”
Following Huey-Burns, co-host Tony Dokoupil had a news brief about Springfield, touting Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) “call[ing] in state troopers to protect schools” as a result of threats emanating from Trump’s “inflammatory claims about that city's migrant community”
Dokoupil only tacked on the part about the threats having come from foreign countries:
CBS's Tony Dokoupil: "Meanwhile, a Republican governor of Ohio is taking action after the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, made inflammatory claims about that city's migrant community. The Republican governor there, Mike DeWine has called in state troopers to… pic.twitter.com/OzRAkGMP9X
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 17, 2024
Apologies are really hard for the liberal media, so don’t expect them to concede Trump and Vance had nothing to do with these dialed-in fake threats.
To see the relevant transcripts from September 17, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).
