Years of simmering suggestions from influential media personalities about an assassination of Donald Trump could be coming to a boil.
Less than three weeks after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., police arrested a Texas woman suspected of planning another attack on the former president.
And while many details have not been made public, one thing is clear: The atmosphere for that kind of drastic domestic terrorism has been building for almost a decade.
The Washington Metropolitan Police Department announced the woman’s arrest in a statement Friday.
Identified as Christina Montoya, 41, of San Antonio, she was charged with “Carrying a Pistol without a License, Possession of an Unregistered Firearm, and Threats Against a Former President,” according to the statement.
The statement was vague about what tipped off authorities to Montoya’s alleged intentions, noting only that police had “received information regarding a woman who traveled to Washington, D.C.”
However, according to KENS in San Antonio, the WMPD police report on the arrest contained an “‘offense start date’ of July 20,” a week after 20-year-old Thomas Crooks tried to blow Trump’s head off in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The arrest took place less than a mile from the Capitol, KENS reported.
Trump, fortunately, was nowhere near Washington at the time. He was on a fundraising sweep in the ritzy Long Island resort area of the Hamptons, as WNYW, the Fox station in New York, reported.
Will there be another attempt on President Trump’s life before Nov. 5?
But however serious the woman’s alleged plans were, the important thing to note here is how unsurprising the report is.
Assassination threats from foreign sources are one thing — the world is a dangerous place, and Trump made many enemies among the most evil regimes on earth.
Ever since Trump declared for the presidency in 2015, he’s been the target of rabid hatred by Hollywood celebrities who’ve mused openly about assassinations, sometimes under the guise of “joking,” sometimes not.
He’s been the target of deep state operatives in the FBI and elsewhere in the federal government who fed the “Russia collusion” hoax that bedeviled his presidency.
And most of all, he’s been the target of a relentless, all-encompassing attack by the nation’s establishment media organizations that first tried to destroy his presidential ambitions, then tried to destroy his presidency, and are now trying to destroy his potentially historic comeback.
Is it any wonder that individuals marinated in almost a decade of Trump hatred in the mainstream media might take it into their potentially unbalanced heads that committing murder on such a man was a laudable idea?
Is it any wonder that after the Democratic Party has essentially turned “threat to democracy” into a campaign mantra, some possibly deluded soul is going to decide to do his (or her) part in defending democracy by trying to kill the 45th and potentially 47th president?
To be clear, adult human beings are responsible for their own actions, and would-be Trump assassins are no different.
But there’s another level of responsibility involved in the ferment of anti-Trump hatred that has embroiled the country since Trump’s entrance into the political arena.
It’s a level of responsibility that The New York Times assumed with an August 2016 front-page media column that gave the Gray Lady’s blessing to unrestricted bias in covering Trump — and let slip the dogs of war as the rest of the establishment media followed suit.
It’s a level of responsibility celebrities assumed with constant caterwauling about Trump’s supposed threat to American freedoms, and the obvious, logical way to remove that.
It’s a level of responsibility that now-former top officials at the FBI assumed when they orchestrated a smear that ate up millions of dollars of taxpayer money to hobble a president they despised.
And all of that helped create the conditions where some potential killers could feel justified in taking the ultimate action.
Friday’s arrest of a would-be assassin wasn’t the first potential attempt on Trump’s life — it wasn’t even the first in the space of a month.
And it’s almost certain not to be the last between now and when Americans go to the polls Nov. 5.
After years of prep work by the establishment media, the world of “entertainment” influencers and the Democratic Party, more are almost inevitable.
That table was set long ago.