CNN Slaps JD Vance With A Wake-Up Call About Trump After 'Fascist' Complaint
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance says it’s not acceptable to call your political opponent a fascist ― but CNN put Vance’s hypocrisy on full display Tuesday with a supercut of the many times his running mate, Donald Trump, has done just that.
Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, argued in a speech in Georgia on Monday that the two recent attempts on the former president’s life are evidence that Democrats need to tone down their rhetoric.
“We can disagree with one another, we can debate one another,” he said. “But we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist, and if he’s elected, it is going to be the end of American democracy.”
CNN’s Abby Phillip showed her viewers a clip of that quote Tuesday.
“Except,” she noted, “here is Vance’s actual running mate saying exactly that.”
The network showed a compilation of clips of Trump calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “communist,” a “fascist,” a “Marxist” and other extreme, inaccurate labels.
“If Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living a full-blown banana republic ruled by an anarchy and a tyranny,” he says in one video, mispronouncing Harris’ name. (He didn’t go into details about how “anarchy” and “tyranny” might coexist.)
In fact, Trump describes Democrats, and other people he doesn’t like, as “communists” and “fascists” all the time.
CNN put together a rhetoric collection pic.twitter.com/BXQssMDDXh
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2024
Harris ― like many Democrats and some conservatives, including several of Trump’s own former aides ― have branded the former president a threat to democracy, after he persistently attempted to overturn the 2020 election and inspired a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
For months, he’s been casting doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process ahead of the 2024 vote, laying the groundwork to challenge the results again should he lose.
A suspected gunman was apprehended at Trump’s Florida golf course on Sunday in what authorities said was an attempted assassination. The Republican nominee was shot in the ear during another attempt on his life in July.
Trump has blamed Democrats for the violence, accusing them of inspiring it by calling him a threat to the country.