Trump camp says Dem rhetoric 'directly to blame' for past assassination attempts

Former President Donald Trump's campaign charged Vice President Kamala Harris with pushing "dangerous" rhetoric that it said is "directly to blame" for fostering the kind of political climate that led to two assassination attempts on the former president's life.

"She continues to stoke the flames of violence all in the name of politics," Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, after Harris compared Trump to Adolf Hitler from the steps of her home yesterday at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Trump was not the only critic of Harris' rhetoric. Former third-party candidate-turned-Trump surrogate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., argued that the remarks comparing Trump to Hitler "inspires assassins."

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"This type of rhetoric is dangerous to the life of Donald Trump and our Democracy as we know it," the Mississippi Republican Party said. Meanwhile, Jacob Helberg, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that as a person of Jewish descent with ancestors who endured the Holocaust, he thought it was a "disgrace" for Harris to compare Trump to Hitler.

"These dangerous rants by Kamala Harris, comparing President Trump to Hitler and calling him a fascist, are inciting more hate and vitriol, and ultimately leading to political violence against President Trump," said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. Scalise. Scalise is the second-highest ranking Republican in the House and also survived an assassination attempt during a congressional baseball game in 2017. 

"It has to stop. This is extremely reckless and dangerous, and we have seen its consequences time and time again. How many more assassination attempts will it take before Democrat leaders tone down their rhetoric?"