After years of vilifying Donald Trump, liberals throughout the country laid on the crocodile tears over the weekend following his attempted assassination. Calls for prayers and a return to civility echoed with deep hypocrisy coming from people who, up until just moments before, labeled Trump as everything from “extreme” to “a threat to democracy” to “dictator” to “Hitler.”
Naturally, Wisconsin liberals jumped onto the bandwagon, issuing their own statements decrying political violence. Curiously absent from those statements was anything remotely resembling an apology or a shred of personal responsibility. Had they gone that route, some of them would have had a lot of explaining to do. Here’s how some of Wisconsin’s notable liberals contributed to the political climate that directly led to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and how they tried to cover their tracks.
No one in Wisconsin politics has attacked Trump more openly or aggressively than Congresswoman Gwen Moore from Milwaukee. For years, she has repeated the leftist narrative that Trump wants to end democracy and make himself a dictator. After the assassination attempt, Moore posted a predictable statement to control the damage she’d done:
An underwhelming statement like that could have been expected given her previous statements about the president:
Mark Pocan might be more visible on social media than Gwen Moore, but he definitely comes in second place when it comes to dehumanizing and violent rhetoric. That doesn’t mean it’s not extreme, and given the greater impact his words have, it’s a tossup whether he or Moore have done more to contribute to the violent political climate in this country. His lackluster response to the assassination attempt was:
He immediately turned his attention to Congressman Mike Collins for suggesting the Biden Administration had something to do with it.
Here’s some of the “jet fuel” Pocan has contributed to the political discourse in this country over the past few years concerning Donald Trump:
Few politicians act the fool on social media more than Chris Larson, and his rhetoric about Donald Trump is exactly what you'd expect from the Milwaukee senator.
Larson’s utterly unbelievable response to the shooting: “There is no place for political violence in America. I hope that the former President and everyone in attendance is safe.” (7/13/24)
Kelda Roys can never seem to grab the spotlight like her colleague from Milwaukee, but she sure does give it her all. She promotes all the rhetoric you’d expect from a State Senator representing Madison, including her hatred of Donald Trump. Unlike other Wisconsin Democrats, Roys has yet to issue a statement about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
It should be no surprise that the mayor of Madison Wisconsin would be on this list. Although Trump has nothing to do with how she runs her city, Rhodes-Conway still feels the need to remind her residents that Trump is a threat to Democracy.
Her response to the assassination attempt was to repost a tweet by gun control advocate David Hogg, calling on more gun control.
Tammy Baldwin has made a career of keeping her head down. She rarely leads on any political issue, trying to do just enough to remain a loyal Democrat. In this case, doing just enough involved stoking the rhetoric flames on CNN and MSNBC.
Now that rhetoric like that has resulted in actual consequences, Baldwin issued a statement that “Violence of this kind is never acceptable and I condemn it in the strongest of terms. My thoughts are with President Trump and his family.”
Democrats like Gwen Moore, Mark Pocan, and their comrades in Wisconsin have every reason to believe that they will never face tough questions about their rhetoric over the years that brought America to this moment. That’s because they never face much scrutiny for anything they do. This time has to be different. Wisconsin’s residents deserve to know why they continually used their public positions to dehumanize their political opponents, opening the path to the kind of political violence we witnessed against Donald Trump and his supporters. Getting those answers is the responsibility for every journalist in this state, and it’s the responsibility of every conservative and the Republican party to demand it.
Interested in the content of this Article?
Reach out to the MacIver Institute to aquire more information