Sean Hannity on Tuesday incorrectly said both would-be assassins of Donald Trump were Democrats. (Watch the video below.)
Before he apparently misspoke, the Fox News host was adding to the chorus of Republicans, led by Trump, blaming Democratic rhetoric for inciting political violence.
Hannity played a supercut of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats in politics and media calling Trump a “threat to democracy.” The montage included the president being likened to Adolf Hitler.
“Now, two psychotic Democrats took that rhetoric to heart and now tried to murder Donald Trump,” Hannity said.
The claim appears to be false in the cloudy issue of political alliance. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who grazed Trump’s ear and killed a rallygoer in July before he was shot dead by the Secret Service, was a registered Republican. He had searched for campaign stops by both Trump and Biden in the hunt for a “target of opportunity,” the FBI determined. In 2021, however, Crooks did make a donation to a progressive political action committee.
Ryan Routh, the suspect in what the FBI has said “appears to be an attempted assassination” of Trump on his golf course last week, was previously a registered Democrat in North Carolina but changed his party choice to “unaffiliated” in 2002, PolitiFact and USA Today reported.
Routh voted in the Democratic primary there and has most recently donated to the Democratic Party, the outlets said. He indicated he voted for Trump in 2016 but “made a terrible mistake.” Routh is also registered to vote in Hawaii, where voters do not give a party preference on their registration form.