Headline

Heated Rhetoric As Republicans Blame Biden For Trump Shooting

Published

1 year ago

July 15, 2024

Within hours of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, his Republican supporters in Congress claimed they knew exactly who was responsible: Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Biden’s campaign “rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Senator J.D. Vance, on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, alleged shortly after Saturday’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former US leader was wounded and one bystander killed.

Vance’s comments were part of an escalating chorus of Republicans who have pinned the blame on Democrats — even as the FBI says it has yet to identify the shooter’s ideology.

They also heap more fuel onto the fire in a political atmosphere that has long been tense and fiercely polarised.

“Heated rhetoric has come from both sides” in recent years, Michael Bailey, a political science professor at Georgetown University, told AFP.

Republicans, for whom gun rights and a rejection of alleged government overreach are key themes, “have been more prone to marry such rhetoric with imagery related to guns,” Bailey noted.

“And some of them (including Trump) did not cover themselves in glory when they made light of the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband,” he said, referring to the 2022 attack by a conspiracy theorist on the high-profile Democrat’s spouse.

Trump later mocked the Pelosis, and stoked further conspiracy theories around the assault.

– Biden ‘sent the orders’ –

Steve Scalise, a Republican who was shot in a 2017 attack on conservative lawmakers by a left-wing activist, has also blamed the left for Saturday’s assassination attempt.

“Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning reelection would be the end of democracy in America,” he said.

“For years, and even today, leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita charged on X.

Biden did recently tell donors that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye,” according to comments put out by his campaign — though he was speaking in the context of focusing the party on beating Trump.

Representative Mike Collins went further on the shooting, stating “Joe Biden sent the orders,” without offering credible evidence.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, offered an escalation of her own, telling her followers “we are in a battle between good and evil” and casting Democrats as “the party of pedophiles” and “violence.”

RAED ALSO: ICYMI: Donald Trump Survives Ass@ssination Attempt On Stage [PHOTOS/VIDEO]

“The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump,” she said.

Such accusations risk removing “attention from the very welcome, widespread condemnation of the attack,” said Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

– ‘America needs to stop’ –

The heated rhetoric pushed Biden to issue a rare address to the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday in which he called on Americans to “lower the temperature.”

Trump and Biden have spoken to each other after the incident, while Biden’s campaign is temporarily pausing television ads — part of what some on both sides hope is part of a broader national cooling.

“Tensions are high on both sides, and I think we’ve got to tone down the rhetoric,” 60-year-old Trump supporter Martin Kutzler told AFP in downtown Milwaukee, where the Republican convention is set to open Monday.

Republican National Committee chair Michael Whately meanwhile declined to speculate on the shooting while speaking to “Fox News Sunday.”

“Right now, I think everybody in America needs to stop. They need to pause,” he said.

Among elected officials, though, the accusations keep coming.

“When the message goes out constantly, that the election of Donald Trump would be a threat to democracy, and that the Republic would end, it heats up the environment,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Depoliticizing the shooting, however, is essential, Bailey said.

“In an environment with so many guns… it is possible for heated rhetoric to motivate an unbalanced person on any side.”

AFP

Headline

12 Die, 30 Missing In Peru Landslide

Published

5 hours ago

December 1, 2025

Editor

At least 12 people, including three children, died in a landslide at a river port in central Peru on Monday, and 30 were reported missing, officials said.

The landslide submerged a boat with about 50 passengers on board, and another with none, as they were docked at the port of Iparia in the Amazon jungle region of Ucayali, according to a police report cited by the Andina news agency.

Six people were injured, it added, and a search and rescue operation was underway at the start of the Peruvian rainy season.

Without giving a toll, Peru’s COEN national emergency operations centre said on X that tragedy struck at dawn due to “erosion” of the bank of the Ucayali river.

It said the navy has been called in to help.

AFP

Headline

Nigeria Grants Asylum To Guinea-Bissau Opposition Candidate

Published

5 hours ago

December 1, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian embassy in Guinea-Bissau has granted asylum to Fernando Dias da Costa, the country’s opposition presidential candidate, following alleged threats to his life after last week’s military coup, The Cable Reports.

The coup was announced by military officers on Wednesday, just days after Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election in which both incumbent President Umaro Embaló and his main challenger, da Costa, claimed victory before official results were released.

Nigeria condemned the takeover and urged an immediate return to constitutional order.

In a letter to the President of the Economic Community of West African States Commission, Omar Touray, dated November 30, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, said President Bola Tinubu had approved asylum and protection for da Costa inside the Nigerian embassy in Bissau.

Tuggar wrote that the decision was made “in response to threats made against da Costa’s life.”

“In this regard, it would be appreciated if you would kindly mandate the ECOWAS Stabilisation Support Mission in Guinea-Bissau to provide him protection and security while in the premises of the Nigerian embassy,” the letter stated.

The foreign affairs minister’s Special Assistant on Media and Communications Strategy, Alkasim Abdulkadir, confirmed the letter’s authenticity to The Cable on Monday.

He said, “The decision of the Federal Government of Nigeria to grant asylum and provide protection to Fernando Dia Da Costa falls squarely within Nigeria’s sovereign responsibility and longstanding commitment to regional peace, stability, and democratic governance.”

He added that Nigeria acted “in the broader interest of de-escalation,” saying the government had exercised its discretion “to prevent further deterioration of tensions and to promote social cohesion in Guinea-Bissau and the wider West African sub-region.”

According to Abdulkadir, the intervention aligns with ECOWAS principles and reflects Nigeria’s role as a stabilising force in West Africa.

Following the coup, ECOWAS held an emergency virtual summit of heads of state and subsequently suspended Guinea-Bissau from the regional bloc until constitutional order is restored.

Headline

Trump To Attend FIFA World Cup Finals Draw On Friday

Published

5 hours ago

December 1, 2025

Editor

The White House on Monday confirmed US President Donald Trump would attend the draw for the FIFA World Cup finals in Washington later this week.

The United States will co-host the 2026 tournament alongside Canada and Mexico.

“On Friday, President Trump will attend the FIFA World Cup final draw at the Kennedy Centre,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Trump has made the World Cup a centrepiece event of both his second presidency and the 250th anniversary of US independence next year.

But the giant sporting extravaganza has not escaped the political turmoil caused by Trump’s hardline stance on a host of issues.

Trump, a Republican, has raised the possibility of moving games from some US host cities amid a crackdown on what he says is crime and illegal migration in some Democratic-run areas.

AFP