Two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump have not clarified the Democratic position on whether that Republican represents an existential threat to democracy. The White House still calls him a threat. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has mostly discarded that talking point.
Trump wants it to stop either way. At least, when directed towards him.
“It is time to stop the lies, stop the hoaxes, stop the smears, stop the lawfare or the fake lawsuits against me, and stop claiming your opponents will turn America into a dictatorship. Give me a break,” the Republican nominee said at a Wednesday rally in New York.
“Because the fact is that I'm not a threat to democracy,” he continued, before turning around and using the rhetoric he just condemned against his opponents. “They are.”
The problem for Trump: Harris has moved on from that rhetoric after the first assassination attempt. She did not use any of the democracy boilerplate during her debut rally in Milwaukee in July, and when she accepted the nomination in Chicago last month, she spoke in broad terms about “freedom.”
This was a sudden change, as Harris was in the habit of denouncing Trump as “a threat to our democracy.” She used that exact phrase numerous times while Biden was still on the ticket, most recently on July 13, which was coincidentally the day of the first assassination attempt.
It took Gov. Tim Walz a little longer. While he won national headlines for branding Republicans “weird,” the Minnesota Democrat also called Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, “fascists.”
“Are they a threat to democracy? Yes. Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people's lives in danger? Yes. Are they going to endanger the planet by not dealing with climate change? Yes,” Walz said at a press conference two weeks after the first attack on Trump.
All the same, the change has been complete. And since joining the ticket, Walz has followed the lead of Harris. During the ABC News debate, for instance, she pointed to the Jan. 6 riot, and she took Trump’s “bloodbath” comment out of context. The vice president did not, however, repeat claims that Biden first popularized by saying that democracy itself would end under a second Trump term.
The problem for Harris: The Democrats working the hardest to put her in the Oval Office still argue that Trump could end democracy itself.
Biden explained at the Democratic National Convention that he was leaving the ticket because “that threat is still very much alive.” He loved the job, the outgoing president said on stage, before adding, “I love my country more, and we need to preserve our democracy.” Sitting in the crowd, Harris beamed. The remarks came little more than one month after the first attempt on Trump’s life.
The second assassination attempt, this one in Florida last week and thwarted by the Secret Service before the shooter could open fire, did not change White House rhetoric.
When pressed on whether it was appropriate to still describe Trump as a threat, an exasperated Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration was “not just saying that to say it.” Instead, the Biden spokeswoman replied, they were “using examples,” namely the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol which she referenced more than a dozen times Tuesday.
Insinuating that Biden had fanned the flames with his rhetoric, an assertion held by Trump and nearly every elected Republican, she said was “dangerous.” The press secretary repeatedly pointed out that “the president and the vice president have always forcefully condemned violence in all forms, including political violence.”
And the condemnation of violence has indeed been universal. The switch from the old “threat to democracy” framework, however, has not. While Harris has turned the page on calling Trump a threat, Democratic allies are following Biden’s lead, not hers. During a Thursday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned easily and quickly to existential rhetoric.
“At the end of the day, this is a contest between freedom and oppression, between democracy and autocracy, between bringing people together and further dividing us,” said Clinton, who hit similar themes at the Democratic convention.
That exact message – one Harris has shied away from delivering – Clinton continued, “has to be communicated every single day between now and the election.”
