Piers Morgan Blasts Media Response To Trump Assassination 

British journalist Piers Morgan criticized legacy media outlets for their “double standards” on Tuesday during a podcast, specifically addressing their coverage of former President Donald Trump’s multiple assassination attempts.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly attempting to assassinate Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida. On “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Morgan challenged the media’s efforts to “downplay” the attack, questioning whether the coverage would differ if the victims were Vice President Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden.

“Yeah but it’s worse than that. What it’s also doing is massively downplaying what has happened to Donald Trump and they’re doing this quite deliberately,” Morgan stated. “Again I ask the question if this had been Joe Biden or Kamala Harris who twice in the space of two months have had assassination attempts on their life, do you think anyone in America’s mainstream media would be trying to immediately downplay that and immediately look for things that they have both said in the previous year to try and justify the fact that they might also be culpable for potentially creating violence that hasn’t actually happened?”

“There’s a complete double standard here in the way they’re treating the story. And, you know, Donald Trump — look, he’s no angel … but right now he is the Republican nominee for president and the election’s in 50 days time,” Morgan continued. “Right now he is showing unbelievable personal courage. Would you be going out again for any more rallies if you were Trump with two people trying to kill you in the space of two months? And why are those people doing this?”

Morgan also pointed out the connection between Routh’s “exact talking points” and Harris’ rhetoric, highlighting the labels Trump has faced over the years.

“Yes, they’re deranged, of course they are. Anyone that does this kind of thing is a lunatic, but why are they doing it? Well, in the second case of this shooter on the golf course, you can chart a radicalization from someone who was originally pro-Trump then became a vehement Trump hater but somebody who began to parrot exact talking points that were said about Trump by Kamala Harris about him being a threat to democracy and so on,” Morgan explained.

“This is somebody who has a deranged mind who has been directly influenced to think that Trump represents an existential threat to democracy. Maybe he’s also heard that he’s the new Hitler because they keep using that phrase about him, and I think it’s completely outrageous to equate Donald Trump with the leader of the Nazis who murdered 12 million people,” Morgan added.

He concluded by stating, “There is a shocking double standard, there is a shocking attempt to diminish and reduce the impact of what happened on Sunday,” as well as the first assassination attempt.

In the aftermath of the attack, some outlets, including CNN, questioned the rhetoric Trump has used over the years, while others, such as CNN’s Dana Bash, attempted to distance Routh from Harris and Biden.

Although Routh was initially a Trump supporter in 2016, he expressed disapproval of the former president in a June 2020 post, stating he would “be glad” when Trump was “gone.” Federal campaign finance records also reveal that Routh donated over $100 to ActBlue, contributing to the 2020 presidential campaigns of Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and Beto O’Rourke.