If one were only to watch Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour, they would come away with the impression that “rotten” political rhetoric is mainly a right-wing phenomenon. Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart went so far as to claim Republicans are afraid “of being human” on the matter.
The background for the conversation was President Trump announcing he wasn’t going to call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated. Host Geoff Bennett had pointed out Trump called Walz “whacked out” but didn’t mention other instances of Walz calling Trump a “tyrant,” “cruel,” and urging Democrats to be “meaner.”
It would be one thing to say Trump should rise above it, but Bennett should have at least provided some context. As it was, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru warned, “There's another element of this. On the one hand, you have got this political rhetoric, which I do think both sides, but disproportionately the president, has gotten rotten. But you have also got a lot of untreated mental illness in this country. And it's that reaction of those two things that is causing this threat level to rise.
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