Back in the summer of 2024, in an incident showing the horrid nature of many of President Trump’s political enemies, a Democratic Representative responded to the failed assassination of President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, with a tweet in which he called now-President Trump “the devil.” As could be expected, that post from Colorado Democratic Rep. Steven Woodrow drew massive condemnation and harsh criticism from across the political spectrum.
For context, Rep. Woodrow still maintains his seat, showing that many Democrats of his sort and like his constituents are not concerned about or interested in reversing the angry, potentially violent state of American politics. That is similarly borne out by the fact that many Democrats, including in the party’s upper reaches, have been calling for rioters to “rise up” against President Trump for enforcing the law or who are threatening immigration officers with guillotines in deep blue cities are not worried.
In any case, Woodrow initially reacted to the president’s hair’s breadth escape from death by writing, “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil, but here we are,” which provoked an expectedly massive negative reaction on social media, with users berating him for his total lack of decency and manners.
For example, some infuriated users on X tweeted at the Democrat to “Resign,” Colorado media reports. Others who joined in the pile-on called him a “monster,” or told him that “You have unmasked yourself as an enemy of America and the American people. Time to resign.”
It was only when he received such a monumental flood of negative attention that Rep. Woodrow recanted and apologized, writing, “My message, as inarticulate as it was, is that acts of violence like this are awful and only make it more likely that Trump now wins. We must always resolve our differences peacefully at the ballot box—not through violence. I know people are hurting, and I apologize that my words caused additional pain.”
Reacting to his Democratic colleague’s awful online commentary, Republican Matt Soper stated, echoing the thoughts that many on the right still have as they see the riots and horrid sentiment about President Trump in blue areas, “I believe the tweet illustrates the insensitivity that we’ve reached in the United States where we say things like that, and later realize, ‘oh shoot, this was a real assassination attempt. This was millimeters from killing President Trump.’”
Pivoting after noting that his far-left colleague had been “caught in the emotion” of the political moment, the Republican then called out then-President Joe Biden for his comments about President Trump, in which the then-president reportedly told donors, “we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
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Commenting on that in a since-deleted tweet after slamming Woodrow, Rep. Soper wrote, “The blood of the dead and wounded, including that of Pres Trump, is on Biden’s hands! He is not fit for the office of the presidency and should be prosecuted for criminal incitement of violence and solicitation of murder.”