Lake County Gazette

The language of politics is nasty and in recent years it’s become extreme, Wirepoints writers Ted Dabrowski and John Klinger report in an op-ed posted on July 17. Many even link the assassination attempt on Donald Trump to the rhetoric that’s enveloped this presidential election. We won’t go that far, as vile language does not equal assassination attempts and free speech deserves to be fiercely protected, no matter how offensive it may get between politicians.

But what can’t be ignored is the damage done to the social fabric of the nation by the name-calling that condemns massive swaths of the American population as racist, fascist or a “threat to our country,” which our own governor is guilty of doing. In the last two years, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has increasingly betrayed his own ideology of “inclusiveness” with a growing attack on nearly half the country. His vitriol has become destructive.

Gov. Pritzker is a leading voice in today’s Democratic Party and a major surrogate for President Biden and his own messaging. Pritzker’s words matter. When he calls Trump a “threat to our democracy” and accuses him of fascism and authoritarianism, Pritzker knows he’s effectively labeling the 70 million-plus MAGA Republicans the same because of their support for Trump. It’s not the name-calling itself that matters, but rather the impact such language has on the left. Pritzker is telling his half of the country there should be and can be no compromise, no cooperation with the other “fascist” half. It’s polarizing to the extreme.

Pritzker’s rhetoric became more extreme when he began hinting at presidential ambitions. During his first presidential preview speech in New Hampshire, he remarked: “Let me be clear, I loathe Donald Trump. Every stump speech I delivered in my 2018 campaign began with ‘Everything we care about is under siege by a racist, misogynist, homophobic xenophobic president.’” The crowd cheered, and since then he’s upped his rhetoric even further.

Pritzker’s latest speeches and tweets go so far as to call Trump a “threat to the nation” as well as declare “right wing extremism” a threat to “our democracy and our freedoms.” Today, the governor is the Democrats’ main attack dog, if the New York Times headline “This Top Democrat Is Leading His Party’s Attack on Trump as a Felon,” is any indication.

Pritzker’s personal attacks against Trump have escalated to tying MAGA to fascism. Just last year, the governor told listeners at the Illinois state fair: Illinois Democrats have done more in the last five years to push back on the wave of authoritarian, anti-democratic MAGA Republican nonsense than in any other place in the country…leave it to us to raise the tallest flag in the fight against modern American fascism.” 

Pritzker also accused MAGA Republicans of stirring up hatred after his Chicago home was vandalized in October of last year: “The divisions across the country, which are being fomented by the MAGA Republicans led by their MAGA Republican leader Donald Trump, are causing people to feel that there’s a hatred, that it’s okay to act upon if they disagree with you on an issue.” 

Even disagreements on policy issues are now an existential threat to democracy. Think Big America, Pritzker’s national abortion-rights organization, declared “Far-right extremism” – defined as “being against abortion” now “threatens our democracy and our freedoms.” 

And Trump himself is a “threat” to the country, according to Pritzker: “Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter and a threat to this country. He can now add one more title to his list — a felon.”

Pritzker has been relentless. Just a month before the fateful Trump rally in Pennsylvania, the governor tweeted his longest list of invectives yet: “Donald Trump is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and a congenital liar. He’s a racist, sexist, misogynistic narcissist who wants to use the levers of power to enrich himself and punish anyone who dares speak a word against him.”

The attempted assassination has caused the Democratic Party and Gov. Pritzker to pull their punches – at least for now. They’ve canceled a planned series of attack ads that were set to run during the Republican National Convention. And Pritzker’s own planned appearance in Milwaukee has also been scrubbed.

The peace won’t last long. Gov. Pritzker’s national image – and his potential hopes for the presidency – are too closely entwined with his anti-Trump crusade for him to abandon it for long. 

In fact, the governor was already back to the personal insults just three days after the assassination attempt:

“I have never, and never would call for any political violence. And you can take that to the bank. That’s not anything that I’ve ever advocated. I think that there’s always hot competition in the world of ideas, in the political world. And so we all advance our own ideas and when their ideas are bad ones, we call them out.

But it’s still true that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, has been a congenital liar and is unfit for the office of President of the United States.”

Not even an assassination attempt can temper Gov. Pritzker. That’s quite revealing.