British journalist Piers Morgan ripped into legacy media outlets’ “double standards” Tuesday on a podcast, calling out their coverage of former President Donald Trump’s multiple assassination attempts.
Officials arrested 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh on Sunday after allegedly attempting to assassinate the former president in West Palm Beach, Florida. While on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Morgan called out outlets attempting to “downplay” the attack, asking if their coverage would be the same if the incident had occurred to Vice President Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden.
“Yeah but it’s worse than that. What it’s also doing is massively downplaying what has happened to Donald Trump and they’re doing this quite deliberately,” Morgan said. “Again I ask the question if this had been Joe Biden or Kamala Harris who twice in the space of two months have had assassination attempts on their life do you think anyone in American’s mainstream media would be trying to immediately downplay that and immediately look for things that they have both said in the previous year to try and justify the fact that they might also be culpable for potentially creating violence that hasn’t actually happened?”
“So there’s a complete double standard here in the way they’re treating the story. And, you know, Donald Trump — look, he’s no angel … but right now he is the Republican nominee for president and the election’s in 50 days time,” Morgan continued. “Right now he is showing unbelievable personal courage. Would you be going out again for any more rallies if you were Trump with two people trying to kill you in the space of two months? And why are those people doing this?”
Morgan continued to point out the connection between Routh’s “exact talking points” to Harris’ rhetoric, calling out the names that Trump has been labeled over the years.
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“Yes, they’re deranged, of course they are. Anyone that does this kind of thing is a lunatic, but why are they doing it? Well in the second case of this shooter on the golf course you can chart a radicalization from someone who was originally pro-Trump then became a vehement Trump hater but somebody who began to parrot exact talking points that were said about Trump by Kamala Harris about him being a threat to democracy and so on,” Morgan said.
“This is somebody who has a deranged mind who has been directly influenced to think that Trump represents an existential threat to democracy. Maybe he’s also heard that he’s the new Hitler because they keep using that phrase about him and I think it’s completely outrageous to equate Donald Trump with the leader of the Nazis who murdered 12 million people,” Morgan continued.
Routh had frequently condemned Trump on his social media page, stating Democrats would “keep America democratic and free,” as well as claiming the former president would “make Americans slaves again,” according to the Washington Examiner.
The British host concluded that “there is a shocking double standard, there is a shocking attempt to diminish and reduce the impact of what happened on Sunday” as well as the first assassination attempt.
Following the attack against the former president, outlets such as CNN questioned the rhetoric Trump has used over the years, while others such as CNN’s Dana Bash have attempted to distance Routh from Harris and Biden.
While Routh appeared to have been a supporter of Trump in 2016, the 58-year-old had posted in June 2020 his disapproval of the former president noting he would “be glad” when he was “gone.” Federal campaign finance records additionally show Routh had donated over $100 to ActBlue, making contributions to the 2020 presidential campaigns of Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard and Beto O’Rourke.
Featured Image Credit: Pete Riches
