Maggie Haberman Calls BS On Trump Amid Assassination Tries: ‘Trump’s Rhetoric Has Been Much Hotter’ And ‘Darker’

New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman called BS on former President Donald Trump for his comments on political rhetoric in the wake of two assassination tries, noting Trump’s rhetoric has been “much hotter” and “darker.”

Shots were fired at Trump International golf course Sunday afternoon in what turned out to be a failed assassination plot. The suspect fired no shots and never had a line of sight to Trump. Sunday’s incident occurred two months, almost to the day after the July 13 assassination attempt that left Trump bloodied and a supporter dead.

In the wake of both incidents, Trump and his allies have tried to blame Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, for calling Trump a “threat to democracy.”

Haberman was a guest on this week’s edition of NPR’s Fresh Air, and was asked about the “level of bitterness” in politics.

While Haberman cautioned it wasn’t fair to say Trump “brought on” these incidents, she noted that Trump’s rhetoric has been head-and-shoulders worse than that of his critics:

DAVIES: You know, I recall that when we spoke in 2022, we ended our conversation by talking about the level of bitterness in American political discourse these days, how political identity is increasingly defined by who you hate and who hates you. And you note that this happened before Trump’s appearance as a candidate, but you say he fueled it and accelerated it because he benefits from it and sees hate as a public good. I remembered that. We’ve now seen two assassination attempts with Trump as the target in the space of a couple of months. He wrote on Monday, because of this communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse. Does this campaign feel like something really different now?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: It does. And thanks for having me back, Dave. I want to just say at the outset, I don’t think that it’s quite fair to say Trump brought on two assassination attempts or the second one is an apparent assassination attempt according to the FBI. I do think that the rhetoric of this campaign has been heated for quite some time, but not symmetrically. And that’s the big difference. I think that Trump has been vilifying his opponents for quite some time. His opponents have vilified him in the form of saying he’s a threat to democracy. He has treated those two approaches as completely parallel, and they’re just not. Trump’s rhetoric is much hotter, it is much more accusatory, and it is darker. But I do think that what we discussed in 2022 stands, which is that the political moment is defined, by who you hate and who hates you back, and it has been getting exponentially worse since we first had that conversation.

DAVIES: Right. You know, it seems both sides have in common that they believe the other side is essentially threatening the future of the nation, and that can inspire people to radical actions.

Watch above via NPR’s Fresh Air.