Freshman U.S. Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, in a speech and in a 1200-word social media post on Monday attacked Democrats for what he claimed is “rhetoric” fueling the two alleged assassination attempts on his running mate, ex-president Donald Trump. His efforts were both refuted as false and hypocritical, and served as an invitation for countless examples of how he and especially Trump have been engaging in dangerous rhetoric.

On Tuesday Vance continued his attacks, claiming he and Trump now deserve apologies because the dozens of bomb threats inflicted on Springfield, Ohio, after they both lied about immigrants stealing pets and eating them, allegedly came from overseas.

“I’m still waiting on a correction and apology from the left wing journalists,” Vance wrote on social media. “They lied about these bomb threats to silence us.”

Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine told reporters there had been 33 bomb threats against 22 facilities in Springfield in under a week after Trump’s false claim Tuesday night. But now, without any proof, Republicans are claiming the bomb threats came from overseas, as if somehow that absolves them of any guilt for having fueled them.

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Vance admitted to CNN that the allegations, which led Donald Trump during last week’s presidential debate to lie that immigrants are “eating the cats,” and “eating the dogs,” was a story he had created to advance his agenda.

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a conservative and former Bush White House speech writer, on Tuesday wrote: “The difference: The upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true. Trump really did mount a violent coup against the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes in office, including from foreign governments. He really was helped into power by Russian espionage agencies. He really did steal secret documents from the US government after his election defeat. And Vance really did, and by his own admission, intentionally “create stories” for political advantage that put residents of his state at risk of physical harm.”

Vance responded: “I’d say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice.”

Frum replied, “They’re going to rename the Streisand Effect after this guy.”

For those who don’t know, the “Streisand Effect” in short, is when an attempt to tamp down something leads to it being given a lot more attention.

That’s exactly what happened when Vance on Monday told Democrats to “tone down the rhetoric,” which he alleges led to the two Trump assassination attempts. He offered only one example, of a Democratic Congressman calling for Trump to be “eliminated,” from the ballot for president. A call for which he later apologized for not being clearer.

Vance’s attack led to a flood of people explaining why Donald Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous.

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“This isn’t easy to write, but it needs to be written,” wrote Joe Walsh, the former Republican Tea Party Congressman. “The sad truth is this: It’s not at all surprising that someone would try to kill him,” he said of Trump.

“I mean, think about it. Every day for 9yrs, he’s spewed hate, spread division, and incited violence like no other. Every day. Ever since he came down that escalator. Every day, he’s attacked this person or that person, this group or that group. In cruel, ugly ways. Every day for 9yrs he’s been hating on people and inciting violence against people. Remember earlier this year, when he actually shared a meme of a hogtied, kidnapped Joe Biden? He’s been like a juvenile delinquent who has thrown a firecracker into a crowd of people every day. Eventually, someone is going to go after that boy. Political violence must be strongly condemned. Always. It’s wrong that someone would try to kill him. Terribly wrong. But it’s not surprising. Not at all. It really isn’t. He has been the country’s megaphone for hate.”

On Monday, Walsh had noted: “In blaming Democrats’ rhetoric for the assassination attempt, Trump accuses Democrats of ‘wanting to destroy this country’ and calls Democrats ‘the enemy from within.’ Dangerous rhetoric coming from Democrats, huh?”

And conservative political commentator Charlie Sykes noted: “On the same day Ohio’s GOP guv sent state police to 17 schools in Springfield after threats of violence, the men who incited those threats are demanding that the rest of us tone down our rhetoric. This is rich. By which I mean unmitigated bullsh*t.”

RELATED: 33 Bomb Threats in Springfield Shuttered 22 Facilities in Days After Trump’s Immigrant Lie

Image via Shutterstock

Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance published a 1203-word diatribe Monday night filled with falsehoods and feeble hypocrisies, demanding that Democrats “tone down the rhetoric” while insisting he opposes “censorship.” Critics are accusing the GOP vice presidential nominee of hypocrisy and gaslighting the public, given his and his running mate’s lies about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets, and Donald Trump’s vicious attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, which mirror what Vance is urging Democrats to not do.

“Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf,” Vance alleged in his post on X, before reaching this dramatic conclusion: “The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.”

That’s how Vance’s screed ended. But it began with a falsehood: “Yesterday, Donald J. Trump nearly lost his life.”

He was referring to the alleged attempted assassination on Sunday, during which a 58-year old man who voted for Trump in 2016 before publicly expressing his regret and supporting Republican Nikki Haley this year, was found by a Secret Service agent outside the perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course, 300 to 500 feet away from the ex-president, with an AK-47. The agent shot at the suspect, who had been waiting in the bushes for about 12 hours.

“Ryan Wesley Routh did not fire any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and sped away after an agent who spotted him shot in his direction, officials said. He was arrested in a neighboring county,” NBC South Florida reported.

RELATED: Trump Repeatedly Blames Biden, Harris for Assassination Attempt Allegedly by Another GOPer

And while this second alleged assassination attempt, once again by a GOP voter, is disturbing, Trump did not nearly lose his life anymore than he “took a bullet for democracy,” as he claimed after the first assassination attempt.

And yet Vance wrote, “The rhetoric is out of control. It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed a few years ago. It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice” – a clear attack on Democrats despite both alleged attempted shooters targeting Trump were his own supporters, at least at one time. As for the Scalise shooting in 2017, seven years ago, the perpetrator had a 20-year history of run-ins with the police, including an arrest “after a 2006 incident in which he was accused of beating his foster daughter, according to court records. The case crumbled after the victim decided not to testify,” Bloomberg reported. Had he been convicted he would have been unable to own a gun.

Vance also claimed that “Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed, and used the exact same phrase.”

NCRM could find no news reports making the claim Routh has said that, but you know who has? The American people.

“Americans agree that the future of democracy is on the line in the 2024 election but disagree about who poses the biggest threat,” is the headline of a December PBS News report.

“A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 62% of adults say democracy in the U.S. could be at risk depending on who wins next fall. Majorities of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (55%) feel the same way, but for different reasons.”

Vance also promoted the claim – again, nowhere to be found in news reports NCRM could find – that, he says, “suggest [the bomb threats] came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.”

It is the same suggestion made, apparently without public proof or substance, by Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine and Attorney General Dave Yost, also citing no source.

As for the bomb threats, Governor DeWine announced Monday there had been 33 since Donald Trump and JD Vance made their wild accusations that Haitian immigrants (20,000 “illegal” migrants they falsely claimed) are stealing and eating the cats and dogs of Springfield residents. 33 affecting 22 facilities including elementary schools and hospitals that were forced to be evacuated, shuttered, or searched.

RELATED: 33 Bomb Threats in Springfield Shuttered 22 Facilities in Days After Trump’s Immigrant Lie

Somehow, Vance and the GOP are claiming that the bomb threats coming from overseas (not proven) absolve them of any guilt. It does not. The bomb threats are a direct result of Vance’s and Trump’s lies attacking immigrants, which in turn are a hallmark of Donald Trump’s political career since he came down the golden Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and told the American people their problems are being caused by Mexicans.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said on the June day when he launched his first presidential run. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people.”

And while Vance is demanding Democrats “tone down the rhetoric,” he ignores the words of his running mate, Donald Trump, who just last week repeatedly called Vice President Harris “a threat to democracy,” in a speech before the Fraternal Order of Police.

Meanwhile, civil rights and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler blasted Vance’s massive social media post, calling it a “a fascist manifesto,” in which, she writes, the Ohio Senator argues “that false claims dehumanizing migrants is opinion the censorship of which will lead to violence, but Harris’ factual observations about Trump’s coup attempt is violence.”

Posting a screenshot, Wheeler sardonically remarked that his post “starts by feigning to care about incendiary speech, but ultimately says you have to let his Nazi buddies lie about Haitians eating kitties.”

This is part of @JDVance‘s latest, which starts by feigning to care about incendiary speech, but ultimately says you have to let his Nazi buddies lie about Haitians eating kitties.https://t.co/46KK3qBzHF pic.twitter.com/0V30TtXYkd

— emptywheel (blue bayou) (@emptywheel) September 16, 2024

Because it was a lie, a lie that Vance admitted to when he told CNN on Sunday he will “create stories” to promote his agenda: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

National security attorney Brad Moss debunked Vance’s public remarks Monday in which the Senator claimed, “You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out.”

Omg they’re really going with this argument.

Also, it’s false. https://t.co/msiSaYiIR0 pic.twitter.com/C2ZhdBSDUf

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) September 16, 2024

Former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman summed up Vance’s remarks, asking, “So if I understand the new MAGA messaging correctly; quoting Trump and Vance’s actual words they have said on the record multiple times is inciting violence?”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson also slammed Vance, writing: “All your gifts, wasted on a dissolute con man, a rapist, serial adulterer, a bankrupt wastrel, and an eager authoritarian who has stoked more violence, hatred, division, death, and chaos than any President in modern history. You, sir, are the cause of death and bomb threats happening *this instant* in Ohio and you elide your guilt with the grace of a Harvard law grad. Spare me.”

CNN host W. Kamau Bell blasted Vance’s remarks on Monday:

“This reads like your daddy Trump yelled at you & told you to make it right. You had an all-time debacle of an interview yesterday where all you had to say was ‘I’m sorry to my home state. As an elected official it is my responsibility to fact check the things I say.’ & today more bomb threats came into the schools that your constituents send their kids to. You talk about Democratic ‘rhetoric’ like your daddy didn’t lead an attack on a the Capitol. Well, since you said we are allowed to say mean things, let me say this, you are a disgrace.”

Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Folman added, “What brazen gaslighting from JD Vance, who literally led the way on incitement blaming Dems for the shooting in Pennsylvania — ‘They even tried to kill him’ This BS rhetoric [was] repeated by Vance and many top Trump surrogates.”

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough Tuesday morning called Vance’s speech in which he called for Democrats to tone down the rhetoric, “gaslighting of the first order.”

‘This is what you would call gaslighting of the first order’ —@joenbc reacts to JD Vance saying the left needs to tone down the rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/1iJHlNdBO9

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) September 17, 2024

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Just days after suspending his run for the White House and endorsing Republican nominee Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview with Tucker Carlson he has been asked to join the ex-president’s presidential transition team and “help pick” the administration officials in charge of running the government.

Although Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s extremist and now-toxic Project 2025, what RFK Jr. is describing is central to what Project 2025 was designed to do: Heritage calls its nearly 900-page Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” a “Presidential Transition Project.”

“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration,” explains The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 website. “This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.”

ProPublica earlier this month explained, “The most important pillar of Project 2025 has always been about personnel, not policy. Or rather, the whole effort is animated by the Reagan-era maxim that personnel is policy, that power flows from having the right people in the right jobs. To that end, the plan’s most pertinent proposal is reinstating Schedule F — a provision unveiled near the very end of Trump’s term, then repealed by the Biden administration — which would shift as many as 50,000 career employees in policy-shaping positions into a new job category that would make them much easier to fire.”

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Enter RFK Jr., an attorney, conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, and HIV/AIDS denialist. Despite having initially launched his 2024 campaign as a Democrat, the Kennedy scion denounced by some of his family members is apparently familiar with Project 2025.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime Democrat populist running for president as an independent, has a copy of Heritage’s ‘Mandate for Leadership’ on his desk. He attributes his own study of Heritage’s plan as an effort to collect ‘all of these different points of view about wasteful programs in government that could be eliminated,'” Deseret News reported in December of 2023. “Kennedy denies that he’s had any conversations with Project 2025, but he left the door open.”

Last month the progressive political action committee MoveOn commented on the report, writing: “That doesn’t seem like reference material a so-called ‘independent’ candidate would need to have.” 

The progressive group’s spokesperson Britt Jacovich wrote: “RFK Jr. has told us he’s open to using MAGA’s Project 2025 playbook for inspiration. That’s troubling and disqualifying. The Trump and Heritage Foundation effort would gut checks and balances and give MAGA full rein to ban abortions and end the rule of law by allowing the Justice Department to prosecute Trump’s political enemies.”

“You either support Trump and Project 2025, or you don’t,” Jacovich added. “By spoiling the race and reelecting Trump, he’d all but ensure this hellscape would become the law of the land.”

Project 2025 also appears to be familiar with RFK Jr.

Last year in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, James Bacon, described in the WSJ as “a senior adviser to the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Transition Project,” penned a piece titled, “2024 Presidential Candidates Against the Administrative State.”

“Trump, DeSantis and even Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” he wrote, “recognize the need to reassert political control.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” he added, “began his White House bid by saying he’d ‘take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.'”

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Fast forward to last week.

Paul Dans, the former Heritage official who was head of Project 2025 until he “stepped down amid intense criticism including from the former president,” as CNN reported his exit at the end of July, is supportive of RFK Jr.

“I can’t tell you how many MAGA people that I work with, really the hardcore, the most based, who are huge RFK Jr. fans,” Dans said last week, Media Matters reported. “And they kind of were always kind of talking about it. But, remember, RFK Jr. went and interviewed for a job in 2016 at Trump Tower. So, you know, their relationship goes back years. Obviously there’s a lot that doesn’t — some of his positions aren’t square with America First, traditional America First. But certainly, there’s no one better, I think, in the entire country to take on the administrative state, particularly HHS.”

In his interview with far-right host Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr. says, “I’ve been asked to go on to the transition team to help pick the people who will be running the government.”

Watch below or at this link.

RFK Jr tells Tucker Carlson that Trump asked him to join his transition team to “help pick the people who will be running the government”

Vote!pic.twitter.com/n2Nn2BRr2h

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 27, 2024

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