Moments after Donald Trump was rushed to safety following a failed assassination attempt at a Saturday rally, some of his supporters turned toward the press pen with obscenities as they fingered reporters for blame.
“This is your fault!” one attendee emphatically yelled, pointing at individual journalists as he approached the fence line separating them from attendees. “This is your fault!”
Axios reporter Sophia Cai, who quoted some in the crowd warning the press, “you’re next” and that their “time is coming,” even reported that a few rallygoers tried to breach the barriers establishing the press pen, but that they were stopped by security personnel.
In the immediate wake of the horrific shooting, the news media has quickly emerged among some Trump supporters as a body to assign blame.
While the Trump campaign urged its staff to “condemn all forms of violence” and said it “will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media,” some of the former president’s supporters in MAGA media vehemently assailed the press for its hard-knuckled reporting on Trump, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.
Over the course of the campaign cycle, news organizations have, among other things, reported at length on Trump’s plans to warp the federal government for his own ends, including to seek vengeance against his political opponents. That reporting is now facing scrutiny, with some Trump supporters blaming it for producing a charged atmosphere that gave way to the assassination attempt, while mostly looking past the incendiary rhetoric of the former president himself.
