Conservative fact-checked over Trump threats: His 'own campaign' wants him to shut up

J.D. Vance has portrayed a second apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump as an attempt to silence the Republican nominee, and CNN panelists debated whether that was accurate.

The U.S. Secret Service chased an armed man from a hiding place Sunday near the south Florida golf course where Trump had been playing a round, and both he and his running mate have blamed Democrats for inciting that incident and another apparent assassination attempt in July.

"Not just over the last campaign, but the last 10 years there is an explicit effort to try to shut him up, to silence him and, ultimately, now two people have tried to take that silencing to its logical endpoint," Vance told reporters.

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Conservative commentator Scott Jennings agreed there was a concerted effort to silence Trump's political viewpoints and that the latest apparent shooting attempt was part of that.

"First of all, I agree the rhetoric does need to be brought down," Jennings said. "I also agree with him that there are a great many people who have tried to and openly desired to silence Donald Trump. There are people who wanted to take away his social media accounts, people who wanted to take away his ability to speak, so that's absolutely true, and whether you could draw a line between rhetoric and what happened in Pennsylvania, I don't know that we know that yet because it's still very unclear what that shooter was doing. The guy in Florida, a little different story, but the truth is, Republicans today feel like that a lot of things are allowed to be said about Trump, and when something bad happens everybody wants to be hands off about it, and he has to be made to answer for his own rhetoric, which I think also at times needs to be dialed back, as well."

"So look, he's been nearly assassinated twice," Jennings added. "I do think it's a moment of reflection about the what is said about him and the impact it might have in a highly charged political environment."

Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, said that many people – including Trump's closest advisers – wish he would shut his mouth.

"I agree with Scott that, you know, lots of people would like to shut Donald Trump up, including his own campaign," Messina said. "They'd like him to stop talking some of these crazy stuff. J.D. Vance talking about this is a little rich after he admitted that Springfield, Ohio, thing is made up, and yet they had just canceled school three days in a row because of bomb threats. Rhetoric really does matter here, and we need to be very careful about it. It's a little gaslighting to say it's only one side, as J.D. Vance is trying to say. As you say, Trump has said lots of really [outrageous] things that I think his campaign would like him not to say. In 48 days from now, voters are going to make a decision on whose rhetoric they're comfortable with."

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