A conservative columnist has just two words for Donald Trump's and Sen. J.D. Vance's attacks on liberal rhetoric they blame for two recent attempts on the former president's life.
"This whole thing has gotten," Jonah Goldberg said on CNN Tuesday morning, "really dumb."
Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, made this assessment just hours after Vance and Trump tried to thread the needle of condemning Democrats' political rhetoric even as they face blame for spreading discord with fake stories about immigrants eating pets.
Vance Monday night effectively argued the proof was in the pudding, that liberals must be at fault because "no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris."
When anchor Kasie Hunt asked Goldberg what he thought of this argument, the columnist burst out laughing.
"Vance has a gift for phrasing things in such a way as to enrage the very people he's claiming to try and calm," Goldberg said. "I don't find this a difficult conversation to have, I find it a difficult conversation to listen to. I think this whole thing has gotten really dumb."
Goldberg lambasted Vance and Trump for an argument, which the former president made on Fox News Monday night. "It's being aimed at the wrong person," the columnist opined.
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"Trump thinks it would be better placed at his enemies because they're the ones that will destroy the country," Goldberg said. "That's really a stupid position to take."
Ultimately Goldberg said he did not believe politicians engaging in political rhetoric should face blame for "the actions of madmen," arguing the reasons behind Thomas Matthew Crooks' attempt on Trump's life in Pennsylvania on July 13 remain unknown.
Crooks, 20, was shot dead by Secret Service and only a few scant clues to his political beliefs have since surfaced.
In contrast, suspect Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old arrested in Florida on Sunday and charged with breaking federal gun laws, has been vocal about his support for Ukraine and his disappointment with Trump, the candidate for whom he voted in 2016.
"The one from Butler, it's kind of a black box still," Goldberg said. "In a country of 337 million people, I could talk right now about how vests have no sleeves and make someone violently angry. We cannot order on our entire political system around that."
