For months, Donald J. Trump and his allies have described a nation facing almost unthinkable darkness.
The United States is under “under invasion” from “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists,” Mr. Trump told thousands at a rally on Friday in Las Vegas. Babies are being “executed after birth.” America faces the prospect of a “nuclear holocaust.”
Three days later, after facing his second assassination attempt in two months, Mr. Trump raised what has become an all-too-common American problem: incendiary political speech. But not his — that of his rivals.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
His remarks amount to a flip of a well-worn political script. For years, Democrats have argued that Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts, his escalating threats to imprison those he sees as foes, his efforts to overturn the last election he lost, and his refusals to commit to accepting the results of the next one, render him a unique threat to America’s founding ideals. Dire warnings of the dangers of another Trump presidency have been accompanied by an incitement to vote, and defeat the former president at the ballot box.
Now, as part of a continued effort to deny Democrats one of their chief lines of attack against him, Mr. Trump is seeking to blame his opponents for an increasingly volatile political climate that he himself has helped stoke.
“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.
On Monday, Mr. Trump’s campaign circulated quotes from President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats calling Mr. Trump “a threat” to democracy, fundamental freedoms and the nation. The list included the one perhaps most often cited by Republicans — “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye” — which was said by Mr. Biden. The president, after the first attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, has said using that language was “a mistake.”
The attack isn’t new. Since the start of the campaign, Mr. Trump has argued that Democrats represent the true menace to democracy. He has accused Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris of weaponizing the legal system against him — Mr. Trump has been indicted in four criminal cases and found guilty on 34 counts — to portray those prosecutions as a political persecution.
At the same time, he has stood by his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and has called for those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — an attack that he is accused of inciting — to be released, casting them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
Such methods are part of a signature playbook Mr. Trump returns to when he is accused of wrongdoing: He accuses his opponent of the exact same thing….