Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May, has drawn comparisons between his experience and the recent attack on former President Donald J. Trump. The Slovak populist believes the media and political left stoking hatred fueled both incidents.
Fico criticized Slovak media outlets, referring to them as “adversary media,” “anti-Slovak press,” and “[George] Soros’s herd of pigs,” for inspiring his shooting.
“If Donald Trump’s attacker had spoken Slovak, after reading [Slovak newspapers], it would have been enough to incite him to ‘set things right’ with the former U.S. president,” Fico wrote.
Fico predicted Trump‘s enemies will now begin pushing a discourse “about the necessity of reconciliation, pacification, and forgiveness,” echoing the media rhetoric following his own assassination attempt.
Liberal media, celebrities, and others in the United States and the wider West have demonized President Trump for years.
BBC presenter David Aaronovitch recently called on President Joe Biden to “hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s society” in a supposedly satirical post responding to a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
Many media publications have directly compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, including the New Republic, The Washington Post, and Germany’s Stern magazine.
Nigel Farage has also blamed the media for feeding into hysteria regarding Trump, saying, “It’s so unpleasant, that I think it almost encourages this type of behavior.”
