The continued litany of threats to physically assault or kill a president will haunt the country long after Trump is gone.
"Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has bragged on two occasions that he would like to beat up President Donald Trump.
"In March 2018, Biden huffed, “They asked me would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no. I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.’”
"Biden’s tough-guy braggadocio was apparently no slip. A year later, he doubled down on his physical threats.
“The idea that I’d be intimidated by Donald Trump? . . . He’s the bully that I’ve always stood up to. He’s the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I’d smack him in the mouth.”
"Had former vice president Dick Cheney ever dared to say something similar of President Obama, what would the media reaction have been?
"Recently, Senator Corey Booker (D., N.J.), another presidential candidate, took up where Biden left off:
" 'Trump is a guy who you understand he hurts you, and my testosterone sometimes makes me want to feel like punching him, which would be bad for this elderly, out-of-shape man that he is if I did that. This physically weak specimen.”
. . . Actor Robert De Niro has repeatedly expressed a desire to physically assault Trump. A month before Trump was elected, De Niro said of him, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Later, De Niro doubled down with a series of “F*** Trump” outbursts.
. . . This is especially dangerous in the aftermath of progressive zealot and Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s 2017 attempt to assassinate Republican congressmen at a practice for a charity baseball game. Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.) was shot and nearly killed. Three other people were also shot and wounded.
. . . Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), just hours after she was sworn in, said at a rally that she had promised her young son that “we’re going to impeach the motherf***er.”
. . . A few months later, comedian Kathy Griffin issued a video where she held up a bloody facsimile of a decapitated Trump head.