NBC News anchor Lester Holt was quick to blame former President Donald Trump — along with his running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) — for the heated campaign rhetoric that he ultimately linked to what appears to be a second assassination attempt on Trump’s life.
Holt suggested — just hours after United States Secret Service agents stopped the second would-be Trump assassin in eight weeks — that comments from both Trump and Vance about the impact of a massive influx of Haitian migrants on a small Ohio town had led not only to that but to threats against hospitals and schools in that town.
WATCH:
NBC’s Lester Holt: “Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants” in Springfield, Ohio, resulting in bomb threats. pic.twitter.com/apw9WQ1liR
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 15, 2024
“Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio,” Holt said, adding, “This weekend there were new bomb threats in that town.”
Both Dana Bash on CNN and Margaret Brennan on CBS News attempted to tie Vance to the threats in Ohio, saying that he and Trump were responsible for amplifying the very real concerns voiced by Ohioans who lived in the communities most impacted by the migrant crisis.
Vance pushed back, saying that the concerns of his constituents were valid and his willingness to talk about them was unconnected to the threats. He also challenged Bash directly, saying that her tone was more reminiscent of a “Democratic propagandist” than an American journalist.
Neither Holt nor any of the others made any mention of the rhetoric being promoted by prominent Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who posted via X, “Extreme MAGA Republicans are the party of a national abortion ban and Trump’s Project 2025. We must stop them.”
A short time later, he added, “Political violence has no place in a democratic society.”
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