Within a week of the failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, a Jupiter man was arrested for allegedly using social media to threaten to kill Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.
“Threats were also made concerning bodily harm to members of the Trump and Vance families,” Jupiter Police said in a statement.
These incidents, days apart, reflect the unacceptable state of political division in our country and the extreme, hateful level we’ve reached in the name of public discourse.
But the timing and targets reveal a profoundly ironic twist.
Team Trump does nothing to tamp down the verbal threats of death and injury to his critics.
After the bullets flew toward Trump, Vance tweeted that a conspiracy crafted by President Biden had “led directly to the attempted assassination.”
Trump has voiced no regret over his silent acceptance of a MAGA mob’s chanted demands to hang Vice President Mike Pence during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, and he has said nothing about threats aimed at legal, political and media figures and their families in New York, Georgia and Washington.
In his recent rally in the Bronx, Trump, hoping to expand Black support, welcomed the endorsements of two rap artists who had been imprisoned for street gang violence in Brooklyn.
Analyses by Reuters, CNN and other news sources said death threats in political context had risen by as much as 178% since Trump’s presidency.
“These are perhaps the most dangerous hate crimes,” said Anne Speckhard, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. “They’re really scary, because they can take down a democracy.”
The case developing against a would-be assassin in Florida confirms that this alarming tendency is not unique to the party of Trump. But there’s no comfort in this grim truth.
Paul Doell, Hollywood
From bad to worse
Broward County Public Schools has a highly professional staff addressing the needs of its students no matter their gender, orientation, sex, color, religion or ethnicity. Yet the school board and the revolving office of superintendent have made a bad situation worse.
A trans child who has been raised as the girl she is has had to leave her school because she was outed. She’s now experiencing untold stress as her mother may be fired from her school job for protecting her daughter.
This has dragged on for far too long and divides our community. It leaves citizens wondering about the competence of the school district’s leadership and its ability to make important decisions protecting all our children.
The primary responsibility of the school district is to ensure the well-being of students. That hasn’t happened here.
Robert Kesten, Fort Lauderdale
The writer is executive director, Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library.
Is this all there is?
I am not a political buff.
I’m just a retired American citizen who really did trudge all those miles in the snow to school and who was raised to know 1 plus 1 equals 2 and to think logically.
I read that it is estimated that on July 1, there were 341,814,420 people in the U.S., with 244 million eligible to vote.
I keep trying to understand: How on earth, with all these people, there is not another human being, not one, who would be a great president to lead our country.
Sandra Hill, Tamarac
A country any more?
When Donald Trump sent his enablers to the U.S. Capitol, he said they have to fight like hell or they won’t have a country any more.
Well, voters, if you elect Donald Trump as president, you most certainly won’t have a country any more.
Philip Berman, Boca Raton
