In the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, his opponent, President Biden, handled everything correctly.

Biden condemned political violence, offered his sympathies to the victims, didn’t get ahead of the investigation and reached out personally to Trump himself. That’s exactly the right course of action. Trump, too, handled himself well throughout: He immediately raised his fist to let the country know that he had survived, reached out to the victims and put out appropriate statements. His campaign, too, wisely advised staff to tone down their rhetoric, while the Biden campaign put a pause on its political activities. Politicians from both sides of the aisle, as well as world leaders, condemned political violence.

That’s all well and good, and hopefully it will serve to ratchet down the national temperature a little bit. That would be a small silver lining from this tragedy.

The problem is that the national temperature ever hit that high a level.

We didn’t need a crystal ball to know that these are the consequences of that. We’ve been here before, and recently. In 2017, James Hodgkinson – motivated by his opposition to Trump – attacked Republican congressmen practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, a bipartisan annual charity event. We were very fortunate that he was the only casualty that day. Five years later, Paul Pelosi – the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi – was attacked in his home.

Similarly, it should have been clear after the events of Jan. 6 that irresponsible rhetoric could lead to political violence.

Democrats, after all, held Trump personally responsible for the insurrection, using it as a reason to impeach him while he was on his way out of office – even though he ultimately wasn’t convicted. Regardless of your views about Jan. 6 and the impeachment effort, it should have led to Democrats being more restrained in their rhetoric. Instead, they ramped it up, doubling down on the accusation that he was, personally, a danger to democracy. It was clear by their behavior that they never really believed that; they decided to roll with that message anyway.

We now see the impact of that kind of messaging. People take it to heart, believe it and act upon it, even if the messengers themselves don’t believe it.

Democrats weren’t engaging in that rhetoric in order to encourage political violence; there’s no evidence of that whatsoever. They also can’t be held personally responsible for the actions of one individual. To be clear, I am in no way, shape or form directly blaming Biden or any elected Democrat for the assassination attempt. Still, their extreme rhetoric helped create the national environment that led to this incident. If Democrats insist that Donald Trump is to be held responsible for the actions of his supporters, they need to be held responsible for the consequences of that insistence.

We see, too, the double standard applied to Democrats and Republicans. Trump is held personally responsible for both violent events, like Jan. 6, and Project 2025 dreamed up by conservative activists. Trump, in the eyes of Democrats and the mainstream media, seems to be responsible for everything that any Republican or conservative does, whether or not he agrees with it – or has any knowledge of it.

Biden, meanwhile, is able to say and do anything and is never held responsible for it by anyone.

He has declared his opponent a threat to democracy but isn’t responsible when people believe him. He likes to constantly label Republicans as “MAGA extremists,” yet simultaneously the press lets him get by with vague calls for bipartisanship and unity. He clearly thinks that he, personally, is the only one who can defeat Trump and save the country, yet he’s seen as a good guy doing his best, not a blatant egomaniac.

Let’s hope that the tragic events in Pennsylvania not only encourage both sides to tone down their rhetoric, but eliminate this double standard. Let’s start holding both candidates and parties responsible for what they’ve really done and said, rather than imagining things to villainize them.

If we do that, perhaps we can return to a real, civil debate, with no more innocent Americans killed just because they went to a rally.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins. He can be contacted at:
jwfossel@gmail.com
Twitter: @jimfossel