Are presidential assassination attempts actually the fault of the targeted president and his party?
That’s the thread that NBC News anchor Lester Holt apparently began tugging at in his widely panned coverage of the second assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.
To wit, Trump became an apparent target for a second assassination attempt in as many months, after a gunman exchanged fire with with the Secret Service on Sunday.
(Trump was actually hit by a bullet during an assassination attempt in July, while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. While the former president walked away with just an ear wound, the shooter did kill one rallygoer.)
The latest incident took place while Trump was partaking in a favorite pastime of his — golfing — at Trump International Golf Course near West Palm Beach, Florida.
While a defiant Trump made sure to let his supporters know that he was alive and still fighting, NBC News’ coverage of the incident did not garner such friendly reviews from those same supporters.
You can watch the whole offending segment below:
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The segment was largely jeered because NBC News’ coverage of this latest harrowing event included a curious transition to a different topic — the kind of transition that Trump supporters immediately noticed.
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As Holt began to finish talking to a correspondent about the Secret Service response to the Florida shooting attempt, the longtime NBC anchor swiftly pivoted to the contentious story about whether or not Haitian immigrants were causing unrest (particularly to pets and animals) in Springfield, Ohio.
“Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself,” Holt said. “Mr. Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.
“This weekend, there were new bomb threats in that town.”
Many Trump supporters interpreted that topic change as placing some blame on Trump’s own fiery rhetoric in the escalating attempts on his life.
And Trump supporters did not appreciate that.
“Blaming the assassination attempt on the intended victim is a new despicable low!” Hollywood actor Rob Schneider posted to X. “Just when you thought the captured illiberal media could not sink any lower, the craven Lester Holt and cowardly NBC News shamelessly and deliberately mislead & misdirect their few remaining viewers.”
“Lester Holt needs to resign immediately,” another prominent conservative on X posted. “I’m not being hyperbolic, if the position of the media is going to be that we hate Donald Trump so much because he is exposing the truth that we want him to get shot at and die then they need to resign immediately.
“The American people need to stand up and demand it.”
“If Lester Holt had any integrity, he would’ve looked at the script, crumpled it into a ball and thrown it across the room and said ‘I won’t read this kind of garbage. What the hell is wrong with you people?’” conservative author and lawyer Kurt Schlichter posted to X.
Schlichter added: “But he chose another path, to his perpetual disgrace.”
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