We just had the second attempt to assassinate a major-party nominee for president in the last two months. If you're a major news media outlet, what would be the headline for today that leads your website? Trump Survives Second Assassination Attempt? Secret Service Fails to Secure Former President Again? Or perhaps just Suspect Arrested in Firearm Incident?

Not if you're Bloomberg. They headline a story that went up late yesterday, just a couple of hours after the Secret Service managed to stop the second would-be assassin. Their big takeaway is ... all of the pouncing Trump did:

Take a look at the headlines below that for a taste of Bloomberg's priorities. The assassination attempt plays second fiddle to Trump's reaction to it. This story went up at 8:13 pm ET and got updated this morning at 11:19, and it does nothing to inform its readers about the actual assassination attempt. 

Instead, they seem most concerned that Trump blames Democrats for their incendiary rhetoric in creating an environment that fosters radicalism and irrational behavior:

Former President Donald Trump criticized President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for “highly inflammatory language” he said inspired an alleged weekend assassination attempt at his Florida golf club, as the Republican nominee moved quickly to capitalize politically on the incident.

The would-be gunman “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

Trump did not provide evidence for his claims, but the remarks emphasized how the Republican nominee planned to seize on the latest dramatic turn in one of the most chaotic presidential campaigns in modern political history. 

Emphasis mine. It's never the actual story when it comes to news that plays against Democrats; the story is always about the Republican reaction to it. Bloomberg couldn't even wait four hours after the story broke to spin it as a Republicans Pounce!™ issue. 

And you know what Bloomberg leaves out? Kamala Harris has repeatedly attacked Trump for his rhetoric, and the media has echoed those attacks over and over again. In fact, Harris directly went after Trump in last week's debate about his "extreme" rhetoric:

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Talk about extreme. Um, you know, this is I think one of the reasons why in this election I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans who have formally worked with President Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney. And if you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is, if he didn't make it clear already, just ask people who have worked with him. His former chief of staff, a four-star general, has said he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the republic would never survive another Trump term. And when we listen to this kind of rhetoric, when the issues that affect the American people are not being addressed, I think the choice is clear in this election.

And just two days before the assassination attempt, Senate Democrat Brian Schatz (HI) accused Trump of engaging in "stochastic terrorism" for talking about the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio:

Democrats routinely accuse Trump of being a "stochastic" terrorist and an existential threat to democracy over Trump's speech. Where were Bloomberg's "Democrats Pounce/Seize" headlines? And yet when Trump argues that this demagoguery from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz has a real impact and contributes to an impulse of violence toward him -- after not one but two assassination attempts motivated by political hatred -- Bloomberg thinks that's a story about Trump and Republicans. 

Now you know why we call it the Protection Racket Media. 

We talk about this more often now because the crisis in media isn't just coming -- it has arrived. The mainstream media has transformed itself into the propaganda arm of the Left, and they work hard to intimidate advertisers and pressure Big Tech into choking off access to competing points of view. We hope we can gather as many allies as possible to keep all of these issues in the public square – and indeed to preserve the public square at all.

Join us in the fight. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code FIGHT to receive a 60% discount on your membership.

Update: At least this wasn't the Washington Post's main headline. But it's pretty bad:

Evil. pic.twitter.com/6QRiVVqjb6

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 16, 2024