Political analyst Laura Fink called out Fox News contributor Guy Benson for using “simple tropes” after he bragged that former President Trump was leading the “scorecard” on assassination attempts.
During a Fox News panel discussion on Sunday, Benson complained that Democrats had called attention to Trump’s harsh language against Vice President Kamala Harris after a man recently plotted to assassinate the former president at a golf course in Florida.
“What Trump is doing here is using the left’s standards against them,” Benson said of Trump’s attacks. “Whenever there’s any pretense whatsoever or any possibility of blaming the political right or conservative rhetoric for any sort of act of violence or threat, we get lectures about toning down the rhetoric and a climate of hate and dangerous words.”
“And when the violence or threats flow the other way, the media generally does not apply that to the left,” he insisted. “If it’s going to be tied to words or rhetoric, it is always the Republicans’ fault, no matter who the target might be.”
Fink noted that Democrats had quickly condemned threats of political violence against Trump.
“I think you want to be careful here, though, because creating a false equivalency, when you look at a man who has built his reputation on division and incendiary language and in fact sometimes overt references to violence, this is not you know, you don’t need a fact checker to look this up,” she noted.
Benson argued: “Only one side’s rhetoric gets blamed for things like what we’ve seen now twice in the last three months.”
“The false equivalents, we can talk about that,” he continued. “But what we have seen, if we’re looking at a scorecard here, is two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, zero, thank goodness, against the Democratic ticket.”
“Is that the measure though, really?” Fink interrupted. “If that was the measure, given the number of threats, given the tenor, given the tone, given the repeated statements over and over again, inciting violence, including at the Capitol and against election workers.”
“I’m just wondering what your measure is here, because I just don’t think it’s as simple as all that,” she added. “I think reducing it to those sort of simple tropes, I think it doesn’t advance the conversation.”
“If we want to stop political violence, we have to look at it holistically.”
