(The Daily Signal)—Ahead of the second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, many influential actors, journalists, and influencers warned that Trump is an “existential threat” to democracy, compared him to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, and suggested he or his supporters should face violent attacks. Some continued attacking Trump even after the first assassination attempt July 13.
The New Tolerance Campaign, a nonprofit watchdog aimed at confronting “intolerance double standards” practiced by “establishment institutions, civil rights groups, universities, and socially conscious brands,” compiled a list of extreme rhetoric against Trump that may have contributed to the second assassination attempt.
“New Tolerance Campaign research has shown two kinds of consistent and consistently charged rhetoric surrounding President Trump: insistence that his reelection would lead to the collapse of the country, and calls for the former president’s death,” Gregory T. Angelo, New Tolerance Campaign’s president, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Monday. (New Tolerance Campaign has taken to exposing extremism on the Left, to balance the impact of left-leaning groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center.)
“These proclamations aren’t sarcastic; they’re literal, and they’re being spoken by high-profile politicians and members of the mainstream media with massive audiences,” Angelo added. “It’s shocking that there have been two attempts on President Trump’s life, but not surprising given the existential hyperbole about him pounding Americans’ ears day in and day out.”
Other Violent Threats to Trump
Both Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who authorities say shot Trump in the right ear July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, and Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, the man suspected of planning to assassinate the former president Sunday at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, got surprisingly close to the former president.
However, New Tolerance Campaign identified five others who faced charges for threatening to harm or kill Trump.
In January 2021, a judge sentenced 53-year-old Connecticut resident Gary Joseph Gravelle to nine years in prison after his conviction for sending a letter threatening to kill Trump in September 2018.
In January 2022, police arrested and charged New York City resident Thomas Welnicki, 72, with calling the Secret Service and threatening to kill Trump. He proclaimed that he intended to “stand up to fascism” by assassinating the former president.
In August, police arrested Arizona resident Ronald Lee Syvrud, 66, and charged him with threatening Trump’s life during the former president’s campaign trip to the Copper State.
In July, police arrested and charged Florida resident Michael M. Wiseman, 68, with making written threats to kill Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, after the assassination attempt in Butler.
Last month, police arrested and charged Illinois resident Justin Lee White, 36 with repeatedly threatening Trump, police, and Republicans with violence if the former president didn’t “play fair” during the election campaign.
Where would Welnicki get the idea that standing up to “fascism” involves targeting Trump? The full list of left-leaning pundits, celebrities, and politicians who compared Trump to Hitler would be too long to compile. But New Tolerance Campaign highlighted many examples, and The Daily Signal has narrowed them down to the list below. (The worst is at the bottom.)
None of the people in the list below responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment by publication time.
1. Shalom Auslander
Most Americans may not have heard of novelist Shalom Auslander, 54, but in 2016 he penned an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming that comparing Trump to Hitler “belittles Hitler.”
Auslander first claimed that Hitler had evil plans, while Trump is “just a con man,” but then the novelist suggested that Americans today are “like Hitler’s willing executioners.”
“Will we look the other way, say we didn’t know, stand silently by while millions of our neighbors are rounded up, while women who get abortions are ‘punished,’ while immigrants are given ‘ideology tests’ and our leader heaps praise on oppressive tyrants?” he wrote.
The writer didn’t suggest that Trump would round up Jews and send them to concentration camps, but he did suggest Trump would “round up” Americans’ “neighbors” in a similarly ominous way.
2. Linda Ronstadt
Rock and country singer Linda Ronstadt, then 73, explicitly compared Trump to Hitler in July 2019.
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Ronstadt, who is of Mexican descent, recalled that when Trump first announced his candidacy for president, she predicted, “It’s going to be like Hitler, and the Mexicans are the new Jews.”
“And sure enough, that’s what he delivered,” she said. “It’s exactly the same.”
3. Joe Scarborough
Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” repeated the line that Trump posed an existential threat to America’s representative form of government.
Scarborough said last November that Trump “is running to end American democracy as we know it.”
“He will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country,” the MSNBC host said of Trump, whom he called an “authoritarian.”
‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough goes on UNHINGED Anti-Trump RANT: “He will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country. Just look at his past. It’s not really hard to read”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 21, 2023
4. Robert Kagan
Also last November, political scientist Robert Kagan argued in The Washington Post that if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election the odds are “pretty good” that his presidency will “turn into a dictatorship.”
Kagan warned that the “Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived.” He suggested that, if elected again, Trump would prevent free and fair elections in 2026.
5. Rachel Maddow
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow compared Trump to both Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Last December, Maddow said Trump “keeps saying the kinds of things, the exact kind of things, that Hitler and Mussolini said.”
“There’s a reason Hitler and Mussolini said this stuff, too. It worked then, it works now,” she added. “It has worked abroad all over the world and yes, it has worked here, too. More than we like to remember.”
6. Will Stancil
Will Stancil, then a candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives for District 61A, posted a suspicious question on the social media site X.
“So is there any reason [Joe] Biden couldn’t just drone strike Trump and end this,” Stancil, who currently has more than 89,000 followers, wrote in January. He then deleted the post.
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Hi @whstancil! Why did you delete this? pic.twitter.com/3xZmxIE2j6
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 14, 2024
This post arguably fits with an extremely negative view of those whom Stancil considers Trump’s supporters.
Stancil’s campaign platform stated that the candidate is “committed to listening to voices across the political spectrum—with a key exception.”
“For over a century, far-right extremists have not been motivated by sincere ideological belief but an inner desire to commit violence, dominate the weak, bully the unpopular, and mock the unusual,” his platform read. “Their policy commitments are typically insincere or even nonexistent; their motive force is the pleasure they take in causing pain.”
7. Keith Olbermann
In March, Trump said that the “hostile press” treats him worse than Abraham Lincoln. The Biden-Harris reelection campaign posted Trump’s clip, noting: “Trump says he has been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated.”
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann reposted the Biden-Harris campaign video, saying, “There’s always the hope.”
Olbermann deleted the tweet and clarified that he hoped Trump gets treated badly, although his original post could be interpreted to mean that he hoped Trump got assassinated.
“I’m hoping Trump’s right, that he IS treated worse than Lincoln,” Olbermann said. “As I’ve said for 9 years: THAT HE’S CONVICTED, THEN DIES IN PRISON.”
8. Robert De Niro
In May, actor Robert De Niro echoed Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address by warning that “under Trump,” America’s current “kind of government will perish from the Earth.”
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“If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted,” the actor declared in a speech outside the building where Trump’s controversial trial for falsifying business records was taking place.
“And elections, forget about it. That’s over,” De Niro told reporters. “That’s done. If he gets in, I can tell. you right now, he will never leave. He will never leave. You know that.”
🚨 TDS Alert
Democrats Brought out Robert De Niro to Tell the World what would Happen if Donald Trump Becomes President…
• The government will perish from earth
• Kiss your freedoms goodbye
• Elections will be over forever
• If he gets in, he will never leaveOnly problem… pic.twitter.com/8k78xLuZbC
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) May 28, 2024
The month after the first Trump assassination attempt, on July 13, saw more extreme rhetoric.
9. Jacqueline Marsaw
A former congressional aide for Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., posted on Facebook that a potential Trump assassin should try not to miss “next time.”
“I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time ooops that wasn’t me talking,” Jacqueline Marsaw wrote in the post.
Thompson said he fired Marsaw. His office didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request to connect with Marsaw for comment after the second assassination attempt.
NEW: Staffer for Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) no longer employed after social media post insinuating that Trump’s shooter shouldn’t have missed. @BennieGThompson statement:
“I was made aware of a post made by a staff member and she is no longer in my employment.” pic.twitter.com/3JhmZYYjCb
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 14, 2024
10. Randi Weingarten
At the opening of the American Federation of Teachers convention in mid-July, AFT President Randi Weingarten condemned Trump as an “existential threat to democracy.”
Weingarten, head of the nation’s second-largest teachers union, spoke more than a week after the assassination attempt on the former president in Pennsylvania.
Randi Weingarten says Trump is an "existential threat to democracy":
"The November elections will determine which path we take.. it is seldom a dramatic event or attack that lets fascism in the door. The violence comes later, after they are voted in."
Unhinged lunatic. pic.twitter.com/87K6mYDhKP
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) July 22, 2024
11. Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong, the 52-year-old lead singer of the rock band Green Day, lifted a Trump mask that many critics described as a “decapitated head” during a concert in Washington, D.C.
The mask had the word “idiot” scrawled on it.
I’m not a part of the maga agenda #greenday pic.twitter.com/B8JP8bBl62
— Green Day Inc. (@GreenDayInc) July 30, 2024
12. Steven ‘Destiny’ Bonnell
Steven Kenneth Bonnell II, a 35-year-old influencer who goes by the name “Destiny” and gained a large audience by livestreaming video games on YouTube, said he did not have “much sympathy” for Trump supporters after the first assassination attempt.
“I don’t think I have much sympathy about the attempt enough to chastise people celebrating it,” he said.
Bonnell stood by this statement after English journalist Piers Morgan pressed him on it.
In a livestream video, Bonnell also stated: “I’m ready for the f**king great cleansing” when “we genocide conservatives in this country.”
Destiny: "I'm ready for the f**king great cleansing. when we genocide conservatives in this country.”
Destiny just threatened to shoot Conservatives.
pic.twitter.com/DNaTwcUgkv— aka (@akafacehots) July 18, 2024
Five Things New “Preppers” Forget When Getting Ready for Bad Times Ahead
The preparedness community is growing faster than it has in decades. Even during peak times such as Y2K, the economic downturn of 2008, and Covid, the vast majority of Americans made sure they had plenty of toilet paper but didn’t really stockpile anything else.
Things have changed. There’s a growing anxiety in this presidential election year that has prompted more Americans to get prepared for crazy events in the future. Some of it is being driven by fearmongers, but there are valid concerns with the economy, food supply, pharmaceuticals, the energy grid, and mass rioting that have pushed average Americans into “prepper” mode.
There are degrees of preparedness. One does not have to be a full-blown “doomsday prepper” living off-grid in a secure Montana bunker in order to be ahead of the curve. In many ways, preparedness isn’t about being able to perfectly handle every conceivable situation. It’s about being less dependent on government for as long as possible. Those who have proper “preps” will not be waiting for FEMA to distribute emergency supplies to the desperate masses.
Below are five things people new to preparedness (and sometimes even those with experience) often forget as they get ready. All five are common sense notions that do not rely on doomsday in order to be useful. It may be nice to own a tank during the apocalypse but there’s not much you can do with it until things get really crazy. The recommendations below can have places in the lives of average Americans whether doomsday comes or not.
Note: The information provided by this publication or any related communications is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. We do not provide personalized investment, financial, or legal advice.
Secured Wealth
Whether in the bank or held in a retirement account, most Americans feel that their life’s savings is relatively secure. At least they did until the last couple of years when de-banking, geopolitical turmoil, and the threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies reared their ugly heads.
It behooves Americans to diversify their holdings. If there’s a triggering event or series of events that cripple the financial systems or devalue the U.S. Dollar, wealth can evaporate quickly. To hedge against potential turmoil, many Americans are looking in two directions: Crypto and physical precious metals.
There are huge advantages to cryptocurrencies, but there are also inherent risks because “virtual” money can become challenging to spend. Add in the push by central banks and governments to regulate or even replace cryptocurrencies with their own versions they control and the risks amplify. There’s nothing wrong with cryptocurrencies today but things can change rapidly.
As for physical precious metals, many Americans pay cash to keep plenty on hand in their safe. Rolling over or transferring retirement accounts into self-directed IRAs is also a popular option, but there are caveats. It can often take weeks or even months to get the gold and silver shipped if the owner chooses to close their account. This is why Genesis Gold Group stands out. Their relationship with the depositories allows for rapid closure and shipping, often in less than 10 days from the time the account holder makes their move. This can come in handy if things appear to be heading south.
Lots of Potable Water
One of the biggest shocks that hit new preppers is understanding how much potable water they need in order to survive. Experts claim one gallon of water per person per day is necessary. Even the most conservative estimates put it at over half-a-gallon. That means that for a family of four, they’ll need around 120 gallons of water to survive for a month if the taps turn off and the stores empty out.
Being near a fresh water source, whether it’s a river, lake, or well, is a best practice among experienced preppers. It’s necessary to have a water filter as well, even if the taps are still working. Many refuse to drink tap water even when there is no emergency. Berkey was our previous favorite but they’re under attack from regulators so the Alexapure systems are solid replacements.
For those in the city or away from fresh water sources, storage is the best option. This can be challenging because proper water storage containers take up a lot of room and are difficult to move if the need arises. For “bug in” situations, having a larger container that stores hundreds or even thousands of gallons is better than stacking 1-5 gallon containers. Unfortunately, they won’t be easily transportable and they can cost a lot to install.
Water is critical. If chaos erupts and water infrastructure is compromised, having a large backup supply can be lifesaving.
Pharmaceuticals and Medical Supplies
There are multiple threats specific to the medical supply chain. With Chinese and Indian imports accounting for over 90% of pharmaceutical ingredients in the United States, deteriorating relations could make it impossible to get the medicines and antibiotics many of us need.
Stocking up many prescription medications can be hard. Doctors generally do not like to prescribe large batches of drugs even if they are shelf-stable for extended periods of time. It is a best practice to ask your doctor if they can prescribe a larger amount. Today, some are sympathetic to concerns about pharmacies running out or becoming inaccessible. Tell them your concerns. It’s worth a shot. The worst they can do is say no.
If your doctor is unwilling to help you stock up on medicines, then Jase Medical is a good alternative. Through telehealth, they can prescribe daily meds or antibiotics that are shipped to your door. As proponents of medical freedom, they empathize with those who want to have enough medical supplies on hand in case things go wrong.
Energy Sources
The vast majority of Americans are locked into the grid. This has proven to be a massive liability when the grid goes down. Unfortunately, there are no inexpensive remedies.
Those living off-grid had to either spend a lot of money or effort (or both) to get their alternative energy sources like solar set up. For those who do not want to go so far, it’s still a best practice to have backup power sources. Diesel generators and portable solar panels are the two most popular, and while they’re not inexpensive they are not out of reach of most Americans who are concerned about being without power for extended periods of time.
Natural gas is another necessity for many, but that’s far more challenging to replace. Having alternatives for heating and cooking that can be powered if gas and electric grids go down is important. Have a backup for items that require power such as manual can openers. If you’re stuck eating canned foods for a while and all you have is an electric opener, you’ll have problems.
Don’t Forget the Protein
When most think about “prepping,” they think about their food supply. More Americans are turning to gardening and homesteading as ways to produce their own food. Others are working with local farmers and ranchers to purchase directly from the sources. This is a good idea whether doomsday comes or not, but it’s particularly important if the food supply chain is broken.
Most grocery stores have about one to two weeks worth of food, as do most American households. Grocers rely heavily on truckers to receive their ongoing shipments. In a crisis, the current process can fail. It behooves Americans for multiple reasons to localize their food purchases as much as possible.
Long-term storage is another popular option. Canned foods, MREs, and freeze dried meals are selling out quickly even as prices rise. But one component that is conspicuously absent in shelf-stable food is high-quality protein. Most survival food companies offer low quality “protein buckets” or cans of meat, but they are often barely edible.
Prepper All-Naturals offers premium cuts of steak that have been cooked sous vide and freeze dried to give them a 25-year shelf life. They offer Ribeye, NY Strip, and Tenderloin among others.
Having buckets of beans and rice is a good start, but keeping a solid supply of high-quality protein isn’t just healthier. It can help a family maintain normalcy through crises.
Prepare Without Fear
With all the challenges we face as Americans today, it can be emotionally draining. Citizens are scared and there’s nothing irrational about their concerns. Being prepared and making lifestyle changes to secure necessities can go a long way toward overcoming the fears that plague us. We should hope and pray for the best but prepare for the worst. And if the worst does come, then knowing we did what we could to be ready for it will help us face those challenges with confidence.
Why aren’t these people locked up?