Cayler Ellingson was killed last week in North Dakota after another man, Shannon Brandt, 41, hit him with his SUV. Ellingson was 18 years old.
Brandt was convinced the teenager was affiliated with a “Republican extremist group.” No evidence exists for this claim. Footage of Brandt’s bail hearing shows him seeming confused that he may suffer for his actions.
It comes right from the top. The president of the United States, supported by a fan-girl media, spouts irresponsible rhetoric that led to Ellingson’s death.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden gave a fiery speech about the threats our country faces from voters who dare to disagree with him. Red background, clenched fists, the president shouted into the microphone that America’s at an “inflection point” because “MAGA Republicans” “do not respect the Constitution.” “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he said.
The very foundation of our republic! Our country is at risk! The message Biden sent to unstable people like Brandt is that it’s reasonable to get rid of those who threaten our nation. How can anyone not defend his country?
Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton added fuel to this fire by likening Trump supporters to Nazis.
“I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out how people get basically drawn in by Hitler. How did that happen? I’d watch newsreels, and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms. I thought, ‘What’s happened to these people?’” Clinton said at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“You saw the rally in Ohio the other night, Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised. I thought, ‘What is going on?’”
Commemorating 9/11 this month, Clinton tied Republicans to the terrorists of that fateful day: “There are lessons still to be learned from what happened to us on 9/11 that we should be very aware of during this time in our country.”
It’s not just Hillary and Biden, it’s other Democratic politicians too. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono said fighting pro-lifers is “is literally a call to arms in our country.” Rep. Tim Ryan, running for US Senate in Ohio, said, “We have to kill and confront that [extremist] movement.” And those are just this month.
We all know if Trump had declared some Democratic voters an existential threat to the country and a death resulted, it would get wall-to-wall media coverage. But Ellingson’s killing has been barely a blip.
And few in the media are pointing out that a former major-party presidential candidate, comparing people with their arms up to some of history’s greatest monsters, is using inflamed language that could lead to more violence of the type we saw in North Dakota.
Republicans hear Democrats’ message and the complacent media’s silence and sense they don’t matter to these elites.
There’s this added twist in the whole “MAGA REPUBLICANS ARE NAZIS BASICALLY” language: Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars amplifying the voices of right-wing, “MAGA” candidates and helping them win primaries against more moderate Republicans — because they think the more fringe candidates will make for less challenging general-election opponents.
If MAGA Republicans are so dangerous, how come Democrats threw this avalanche of money behind them? It’s rather cavalier to make such political calculations when our very way of life is allegedly at stake.
The violence Democrats condone with a wink never gets blamed on them. Their media friends love the idea of treating the wrong-voting right this way.
Our country is damaged when half the population is treated as a fringe group, pushed out of public life and faced with violence for their opinions.
In 2017, “Nazi-punching” became all the rage, and I warned in these pages, “Are we really comfortable with antifa, or any mob, playing judge and jury like this? Who’s to say they won’t expand their scope to include perfectly reasonable people who happen to disagree with them on, say, health-care or immigration policy?”
We went from punching Nazis to running over teenagers in just five years. If the rhetoric of the Democratic Party continues to ratchet up, who knows what comes next?
It’s way past time for the media to tell Biden, Clinton and the rest that their language is simply unacceptable; it’s destroying our country far more than some shadowy right-wing group ever could.
They don’t even have to pretend to care about Republicans to send that message. They just have to know that it won’t end with only the left running over their political foes.
Twitter: @Karol
