For years now, the rhetoric around Donald Trump has been anything but friendly. He's been likened to Hitler. Some have claimed that if he returned to office, gays, lesbians, journalists, and anyone else who he doesn't like would be shuffled off to camps. They've called him everything but a decent human being.
Then, someone took a shot at him.
Now, if we judge many of these people by the rules they try to apply to people on the other side of the fence, then their rhetoric was clearly responsible and they should be held accountable.
A couple of people who have played that game were Sen. Elizabeth Warren as well as late-night host and "comedian" Stephen Colbert.
But it seems when Warren was on Colbert's show earlier this week, there was a high degree of tone deafness as well as just some outright stupidity.
To help him make sense of night two of the Republican National Convention, CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed Sen. Elizabeth Warren to a live Tuesday edition of The Late Show, where the duo agreed that true national unity in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump means Republicans dropping their policy preferences and endorsing Democratic priorities, mainly gun control.
Colbert declared, “Senator, the RNC theme tonight was Make America Safe Once Again, and one of the things that makes America at any moment not a safe place is the open, ready, ubiquitous availability of guns, including the AR-15-style gun that was used against the former president on Saturday that the Democrats would like to eliminate, they would like those not available for purchase.”
He then wondered, “Were you surprised there was no discussion of gun control of any kind?”
...
Colbert did not see how anyone could take exception, “We’re on his side, we don't want this to ever happen again.”
That's laughable at best. (It should be noted that Warren did, in fact, join in by pleading with Trump to push gun control.)
Neither Warren nor Colbert are on Trump's side on anything. This is stuff they've wanted for years. They've both spoken quite publicly about their desire to see gun control pass, including a new assault weapon ban. This has nothing to do with Trump and anyone with more active brain cells than an amoeba knows this.
Once again, though, we see the call for "unity" in the wake of the assassination attempt really boils down to "shut up and do what we wanted the whole time, you idiots."
Warren's comments celebrate Massachusetts's anti-gun efforts and make extraordinary claims that gun control would reduce fatalities by 40 percent, which isn't really supported by any properly-constructed study, and she thinks Donald Trump has a reason to listen to her?
She's vilified him at every opportunity. She's been part of the choir calling him every awful thing she can think of, but now she wants to pretend to care about him? Colbert too?
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating.
Just like Biden's assault weapon ban call, this is not something motivated by the events of Saturday. Those are just a handy pretext for political opportunism that is so naked and disgusting that these two would be vilified by their peers if those peers had the least bit of a sense of propriety.
Luckily for both, they don't.
Perhaps even more luckily, their words aren't going to resonate with the people they've vilified for years now. There's absolutely no reason for any of us to sit up and take notice because these two jackwagons are suddenly trying to play nice while still trying to present this idea of "unity" that boils down to "give us what we want and we won't give you jack."
