Speaking at an event in Georgia Monday night, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance noted the need to tone down the national political rhetoric. His remarks continue the Trump campaign’s efforts to lay this weekend’s attempt on Donald Trump’s life at the feet of the Democrats and their “inflammatory” rhetoric.

“I do think that we should take this opportunity to call for a reduction in the ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric coming from too many corners of our politics,” Vance said. “Look, we can disagree with one another,” he continued. “We can debate one another. 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.”

The statement hasn’t landed well online, where many have pointed out that much of the extreme rhetoric of the day comes from Vance’s own corner. In the past week, the Trump campaign has claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets and, following the assassination attempt, said that Biden and Harris are “the enemy from within,” while urging them to tamp down their rhetoric.

And Trump himself has often framed his political opponents as fascists hell-bent on destroying the country. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump has called Kamala Harris a “radical left Marxist Communist fascist” and said of her policies: “This is Communist. This is Marxist. This is fascist.”

In May, after being convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts, Trump said the Biden administration is “destroying our country,” adding, “We’re living in a fascist state.” In November 2023, he vowed to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Even back in 2020, Trump raised the bogeyman of “left-wing fascism” in the Democratic Party, saying, “Fascists! They are fascists. Some of them, not all of them, but some of them. But they’re getting closer and closer.”

While the Trump campaign may, in a dubious effort to pin political violence on the current administration, call for a cooling down of political rhetoric, Trump and the right evidently bear more than a little responsibility for its current temperature.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has spent the better part of the last week making spreading a racist conspiracy theory about Haitian migrants eating pets his prerogative—but he doesn’t want the rootless idea to outweigh his biblical ideals.

Vance’s vitriol has effectively ushering a scourge of hatred and bomb threats onto Springfield, Ohio—the town at the center of the conspiracy—shutting down schools, government facilities, and limiting resources to an area that has been begging for legitimate responses to the migrant influx, such as improved housing infrastructure.

But on Monday, the Republican vice presidential nominee decided to suddenly switch it up, speaking instead about the importance of “loving thy neighbor” before the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition in a thinly veiled effort to blame the incendiary remarks that have uprooted his home state on the political left.

“Because in this room, while we’re disparaged by the media and disparaged by the Democrats as people who want to force our faith on other people, I think I speak for every single person in this room saying, we don’t want to force our faith on anybody,” Vance said. “What we want is to recognize and to have motivate us the faith that is, I think, the source of all great truth in human history and especially this country.”

“That we want our public policy to be motivated by the wisdom of loving thy neighbor,” Vance added unironically.

Vance: We want our public policy to be motivated by the wisdom of loving thy neighbor. pic.twitter.com/lmp1m1Kimv

In the same speech, Vance blamed the left for the “violent rhetoric” that fueled two attacks on Donald Trump’s life in recent months. Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot at Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13, was a registered Republican. Ryan Wesley Routh, who attempted to shoot Trump at one of his golf courses on Sunday, voted for Trump in 2016 and supported a Nikki Haley-Vivek Ramaswamy Republican ticket.

Vance also openly questioned why Trump had been under fire, while baselessly claiming that no one had tried to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I know it’s popular on a lot of corners of the left to say that we have a both-sides problem. And I’m not going to say we’re always perfect. I’m not going to say that conservatives always get things exactly right. But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have—no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” Vance told the Atlanta crowd, adding that the left needs to “cut this crap out.”

Multiple city officials and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have categorically denied Vance’s petthe conspiracy. And on Sunday, Vance effectively admitted himself that the anti-immigration conspiracy was bogus.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has shared some details about the Trump-Vance campaign’s health care plan, and it appears to allow insurers to charge more for preexisting conditions.

Vance gave details on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, where he told Kristen Welker that Donald Trump’s plan involves “deregulating insurance markets, so that people can actually choose a plan that makes sense for them.”

JD Vance on what Trump's healthcare plan actually is: "Deregulating the insurance markets so that people can choose a plan that actually makes sense for them." pic.twitter.com/gYhFBubovT

This would appear to roll back some of the Affordable Care Act, which got rid of insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. Prior to President Obama’s legislation, it was difficult to get affordable health care coverage except through Medicare, Medicaid, or employer-based plans. While health care plans were available outside of that, insurers sought profits by weeding out people likely to require medical care.

Vance said that under Donald Trump’s plan, Americans wouldn’t be put “into the same risk pools.” In other words, healthier young people wouldn’t be in the same risk pool as older people more likely to need medical care, lowering costs for younger Americans. But doing so, as Vance suggests, would come at the expense of much higher charges for everyone else—especially older Americans and those with pre-existing conditions. Right now, the law allows insurance companies to bill older people up to three times as much as they do for the young, Vance is talking about making that gap even higher.

It’s much worse than Trump’s answer about his health care........

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