When 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot into former President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday, the assassination attempt probably didn’t surprise political commentator Tammy Bruce.
For over two decades, Bruce has been warning about the hate-and-fear talk spouted by leftists. In her latest book, simply titled Fear Itself, she has pointed to the violent descriptions used by Trump’s opponents, Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Joe Biden, and how they threatened the former president.
After Clinton denounced half the country with her “deplorables” smear and Biden attacked Trump’s supporters as “semi-fascist” and threats to democracy, there was just one step left.
Now, a week before her book is set to be released on July 23, her warning has come true.
“This is why many people felt that an assassination attempt against Trump was inevitable. People didn’t necessarily know why, but their instincts told them about the direction that the rhetoric used against him would take,” she told Secrets on Tuesday, a day after the bandaged president appeared at the Republican National Convention.
“This situation especially confirms my argument that the rhetoric being used against Trump is so overwhelming and apocalyptic, it is capable of provoking anyone who is already on the edge mentally and emotionally,” said Bruce, who is also a Fox contributor and columnist.
Her new book details the “fear porn” leftists use to bully others to get their way and keep power, including the recent claims by Biden and the Left comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.
It also dates the shift toward more anger and hate to Clinton, whom Trump shocked in his 2016 victory. Bruce said that Biden took that to a new level despite his post-assassination claims that he hasn’t spouted violence against Trump.
“Clinton unlocked the door to characterizing average citizens as enemies of society with her insulting description of Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables.’ Biden put those attacks on steroids when he lashed out at Trump supporters as ‘semi-fascist’ and threats to democracy,” Bruce wrote in her new book published by HarperCollins’s Broadside Books.
Trump, she told Secrets, has long been a threat to the fear campaigns of the Left, challenging their claims in a pattern she said the rest of the country should follow.
“Donald Trump has been the biggest offender as he challenges the status quo and the establishment on the issues themselves. The attacks on him through the justice system, and the constant demonizing and dehumanizing rhetoric used against him and his supporters, is meant to send a signal to society at large,” she said.
Fighting back is the only answer, she said, citing the efforts by Trump and other prominent conservatives, including Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as examples.
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“It’s like Trump getting up from the floor of the stage. One must get up and continue on, and that was his message with his fist up in the air and his ‘fight, fight, fight.’ It was a comment from a man who did not know if that would be the last thing that he would ever say in public, but it was an encouragement to never stop, to continue on with the work, no matter what happened to him,” the commentator said.
“Horribly, this is simply the nature of the Left around the world, including the American Left, which has clearly taken control of the Democratic Party. There’s talk of ‘toning down’ the rhetoric, but if anything, it will just be a pause. Making fear a chronic state for Americans has been a project of the Left for 100 years. It’s all they have, and they will never stop,” Bruce said.