In a media world that loves hard lines, discussions about the Trump shooting follow a predictable path

There are not many facts. There is, however, an avalanche of conclusions.

And so it is in many sectors of the media and among its frequent commentators following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Authorities have not established why a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man attempted to assassinate the former president — and now that the shooter is dead, they may never know. That hasn’t stopped media figures and politicians from speculating wildly. President Joe Biden, Democrats and the left-wing media have all been blamed, without any evidence. Then there’s the ever-popular, amorphous, eye-of-the-beholder target — “them.”

“They tried to arrest him, now they tried to assassinate him,” said Jacob Chaffetz, a Fox News contributor.

Taken together, it’s a reflection of what breaking news coverage in the modern media world was designed to do — draw sharp lines, lean into epic stories, leaving little room for middle ground or, sometimes, even the truth.

Multiple claims of varying credibility

Some of the claims were specific. “The Republican District Attorney of Butler County, Pennsylvania, must immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting murder,” U.S. Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia wrote on social media. “Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” tweeted Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, two days before he was selected as Trump’s running mate. “This rhetoric led directly to the assassination attempt on President Trump.”

Talk show host Erick Erickson blamed MSNBC. “These people wanted Donald Trump assassinated,” he said on his radio show. “You can’t tell me they didn’t.” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, said “Democrats have been inviting this for a while.”

Many news organizations reported clues about the attempted murder of Thomas Matthew Crooks — party registration, political donations, yard signs at his home — but refrained from drawing conclusions.

For many politicians and media figures, there is little incentive for restraint, said Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”

“Because there is so much competition in the right-wing radio and podcast world, the pressure to be the loudest, most outspoken, angriest voice is even greater than it was in an earlier era,” Hemmer said.

They cater to a specific audience and “don’t believe there will be any forgiveness among that audience if they don’t serve them very well,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers, a trade publication for political talk shows.

Blaming Democrats, Hemmer said, also weakens the party’s line of attack against Trump in the current presidential campaign — accusing the Republican of inciting political violence in the past, such as before the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Biden’s comment on the target

After the assassination attempt, Biden called for greater unity and a cool-down on political rhetoric. But the president was vulnerable after his debate with Trump, when he told donors it was “time to put Trump on target” for false statements on stage. The choice of phrase sounds damning in retrospect, and Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday that saying so was a mistake.

Speculative rhetoric in the wake of tragedy is neither new nor one-sided. Right-wing media and political figures were quick to criticize the 2011 shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The New York Times apologized and was later sued for defamation for falsely linking a map released by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that put Democratic-controlled congressional districts in the electoral crosshairs of Giffords’ shooting.

Anger toward mainstream and liberal media figures was palpable after Trump’s shooting; one supporter at the Pennsylvania rally gave the middle finger to television cameras watching Trump being led away by Secret Service agents.

Stoking that anger is easy — and, for some news operations, lucrative. There are few safeguards against indulging in such speculation, Hemmer said.

“The only effective protection is high-damage lawsuits,” she said, like those faced by Fox News before it reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over allegations made after the 2020 presidential election, or the jury verdicts against Alex Jones for his false claims about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

But those cases involved very specific accusations, not a blanket statement of “you caused this,” Hemmer said.

“They don’t have to be specific,” she said. “All you need is the ‘they’ and that does all the work.”

Politicians are more likely to join in the blame and speculation than they did in the past because those who do it successfully, like Greene, have used it to raise money, Hemmer said. Party leaders have less power to stop them because the threat of withholding campaign donations is becoming more tame, she said.

“The media and politicians definitely support each other,” Hemmer said. “More than that, the lines between the two roles have blurred so much that it’s no surprise to see officeholders and media personalities saying the same things.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at