Like millions of Americans, I was shocked, horrified, alarmed, and then…angry. Angry as hell that some loon had decided that President Trump was indeed a threat to democracy, a vengeful fascist, a Hitler-wannabe who was going to take away peoples’ freedoms and undermine the rights of minorities and women and that he had to be killed. 

Why did a 20-year-old young man come to that conclusion? Reports are starting to come in of his unhappy youth. Is it, though, entirely out of the question that one of the reasons might be that he heard it over and over again from Democratic politicians, from liberal talk show anchors, and from chatter on social media from those who often have no idea what they are writing about.

And, yes, from, in President Biden, a politician whose campaign for reelection has barely focused on his achievements, which are few, but instead delivered hysterical alarms about the danger posed by Donald Trump.  My intention is not to accuse individual pols or publications, only to consider that writ large they helped issue the rhetoric they now want to tone down.

The day after the assassination attempt on Trump, Mr. Biden implored the nation “to lower the temperature in our politics.” He claimed, “We stand for an America not of extremism and fury but of decency and grace.” 

One day later, the real Joe Biden was back in the saddle. The president told NBC’s Lester Holt that he had “not engaged” in the kind of rhetoric that might have driven Mathew Thomas Crooks to try to kill Trump, and then began spouting exactly the kind of hateful half-truths and mischaracterizations of his opponent that have dominated his campaign and that might indeed have inspired the young shooter. 

In the rare interview, Mr. Holt responded to the onslaught by remarking, “This doesn’t sound like you’re — you’re — you’re turning down the heat, though.” Just so.

Mr. Biden’s plea to cool the political temperature is the right message but he is the wrong messenger. Mr. Biden ran in 2020 promising to bring the country together, but his failures as president and political perils quickly led him to abandon that ambition.    

Fast forward to the fall of 2022, with pundits promising that the GOP, buoyed by widespread discontent with the Biden presidency, would enjoy a “red wave.” The Biden White House decided to take off the gloves. Mr. Biden took to the podium in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and launched a vicious attack: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he thundered.   

In that speech, Mr. Biden invented one of his many Big Lies, saying, “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” Not one leftist journalist disputed these claims; not one Democrat demurred. 

Mr. Biden never looked back. Democrats outperformed in the midterm elections, and the Biden campaign team decided they had stumbled onto a winning formula: demonize your opponent, lie about his platform, and count on the liberal media to broadcast your message. Mr. Biden ramped up the vitriol with each passing day. As many have chronicled, his Democratic colleagues and his press lackeys followed his lead.

Consider the Biden campaign today. In his remarks, the president may rattle off a few misleading claims about how he inherited and righted a failing economy and rampant inflation (not true), and added 800,000 manufacturing jobs (also not true). Mainly, though, he focuses on how Trump threatens the very fabric of our nation and will destroy democracy.  

In the hours following the attempt on Trump’s life, the Biden campaign took down all its advertising. Why? Because they knew that Republicans would point the finger at the hate-filled language and lies in those advertisements as one reason that a deluded young man would decide that Trump had to go.

As the GOP convention in Milwaukee hits its stride, Trump has evidently scrapped his prepared speech (which he described as “extremely tough”) and will be delivering instead a more measured address. He says he wants to “try to unite our country.”  It is a noble and perhaps impossible ambition, but for sure his opponent has left the field wide open.