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Kudos to the Secret Service for preventing an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a Florida golf course. I assume the ex-president’s protection level was already higher after the shooting in Pennsylvania. Perhaps his security needs to be further intensified. Kudos also to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their good wishes for Trump and their condemnation of political violence in general.
Trump fomented violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and he resisted pleas to stop the rioters storming the Capitol during the official count of Electoral College ballots. His statements about acting as dictator for a day and using the presidency to pursue his political enemies demonstrate that he would continue to threaten our democracy should he be re-elected. During a previous campaign, he joked about not losing voters even if he shot someone “in the middle of Fifth Avenue,” and he urged attendees at his rally to “knock the crap out of” any protesters they encountered. During protests after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, he tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” All the same, he deserves protection against the same type of violent acts he advocates.
We are better than this. The United States has a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. We must keep Trump alive and well so that we can use our votes to reject his ugly vision for our nation, which is based on dividing us against ourselves and genuflecting to a tyrant who demands loyalty to his every abomination. We must keep Trump on the ballot so that we can make the deliberate choice to reject violence, to preserve sanity in government and to reclaim patriotism for those who support democracy and the rule of law.
Jeff Naylor, Minneapolis
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On Sunday, after the latest assassination attempt on Trump, presidential candidate and current Vice President Harris sent out a bland reaction post on X (formerly Twitter).