The last few weeks have been extremely painful and demoralizing for defenders of democracy. President Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate with Donald Trump was followed by a series of extremist Supreme Court rulings; the most shocking provided Trump and future presidents with immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. And after the nation and the world reacted in horror to the July 13 attempted assassination of Trump at a political rally in Pennsylvania that killed one man and wounded two others, Trump-appointed federal Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Florida classified documents case against the former president, which Special Counsel Jack Smith says he will appeal.
As the Republican National Convention got underway in Milwaukee, Trump’s announced choice for vice presidential running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance accused Biden and Democrats of using rhetoric that led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination. Vance and other Republicans are now using that incendiary talking point in an attempt to shut down all criticism of Trump’s well-documented authoritarian agenda and embrace of political violence.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Michael Podhorzer, former political director and assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO for strategic research. Here, he shares his views on how the assassination attempt against Donald Trump is being used to silence those who condemn Trump’s persistent attacks on U.S. democracy and also discusses Democrats’ ongoing calls for Biden to drop out of the race in favor of a stronger candidate.
MICHAEL PODHORZER: I think it’s really straightforward gaslighting if we let that happen. But I mean, literally what he’s saying is that Donald Trump said,”I wanna be a dictator on Day One, and whatever the president does is legal” and Biden and others have said, Donald Trump says he wants to be a dictator on Day One and not be constrained by any laws. And so essentially what J.D. Vance is saying is that saying that “You’re gonna be a dictator isn’t decisive, but telling people that you’re gonna be a dictator after you said it is divisive.” It’s just ridiculous.
And we have to hope that the media and others don’t fall for it. No one has been engaged in more vitriolic and violent-inflected rhetoric than Trump and Republicans have been for a decade. That is why we have to make sure that, that we resist this idea of, well, both sides are fanning the flames. No, there’s only one arsonist in the building.
SCOTT HARRIS: So President Biden, Democrats and Republicans across this political spectrum have talked about the need to tone down our political rhetoric. But does that mean that many of us who believe that Donald Trump does pose a threat to democracy, should sit down and shut up as J.D. Vance asks us to or demands us to, which is his message. Other Republicans, of course are saying along those same lines, tone down any critique of Trump and his threat to democracy, while these same politicians applaud the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as patriots and heroes.
MICHAEL PODHORZER: Yeah. Then that’s what’s so absurd about it, right? And that’s why it’s absurd that anyone takes them seriously when they talk about that.
SCOTT HARRIS: You talked about the media a moment ago in terms of their coverage right now of the Republican National Convention. From my perspective, they’ve normalized Donald Trump and the Republican party in this campaign thus far. And the threats he posed while he was in office to democracy as well as his program agenda, his threat of revenge and retribution and all that rhetoric that he’s spewing out over these past bunch of months that’s not really being covered in our corporate media. What’s your view of this coverage? And we’re likely to see a lot of that same kind of thing of the GOP convention in Milwaukee.
MICHAEL PODHORZER: I think that that’s the problem, but then we have to make sure that after the convention we can get back to where I think we were headed before the debate.
SCOTT HARRIS: That’s the best way we can influence the media to make sure they cover these important issues and not just walk away from them under threat of J.D. Vance or anyone else?
MICHAEL PODHORZER: Well, I think one thing is, I mean, depending on where you are and what you can do is demonstrating how opposed you are to the Trump and MAGA Project 2025 agenda, right? I think the media takes a lot of cues from whether it’s these average voters getting how upset they are, how willing they are to take action. And so even if you’re not in a battleground state, we all have to show that this is an unacceptable future for us.
SCOTT HARRIS: Michael, I wanted to ask you about the status of President Biden as the Democratic candidate going into the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It doesn’t seem that the call for Joe Biden to drop out of the race has gone away. Do you believe that Joe Biden should remain as the Democratic party candidate, or should someone like Vice President Kamala Harris be drafted to run in Biden’s place, given the declining poll numbers, especially in the battleground states that you need to win the 2024 election in the Electoral College?
MICHAEL PODHORZER: Yeah, I think there’s no question that Joe Biden is not the best candidate right now to defeat Trump in November, but I think two important things have to go along with that. One is that his administration has done a lot of good things. The other thing is that even though he may not be the best candidate against Trump, no one should see his staying in the race, which none of us really can control as meaning that Trump is inevitably gonna win, right? Because ultimately it’s all of us who vote. It’s all of us who talk to each other about what’s at stake in the election. And it may be harder if Biden’s the nominee, but you’re giving up on democracy if you give up on your own ability to make a difference.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Michael Podhorzer (23:49) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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