Rudy Giuliani has a message for Democrats: Their rhetoric, especially President Joe Biden’s, has been “an invitation of violence.”
Democrats “get away with murder because there’s a two-tier system of justice,” Giuliani told me outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday afternoon. “They can do the worst things in the world—nobody pays attention. We can make little mistakes, and they become world class.”
This is, of course, the same Rudy Giuliani who spoke to MAGA supporters ahead of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, calling for “trial by combat.”
It’s also the same Giuliani who falsely accused a temporary election official in Fulton, Georgia of manipulating ballots in the 2020 election—a claim that Trump echoed when he said that worker, Ruby Freeman, was a “vote scammer” in his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger alleging widespread fraud. Based on these allegations, a mob of election-integrity skeptics also appeared at Freeman’s house on January 6, 2021; luckily the FBI was able to warn her that her safety was at risk, allowing her to flee in time. (Giuliani was found liable for defamation and was ordered to pay Freeman and her daughter $148 million in damages in 2023. In separate court proceedings, Giuliani was disbarred by a New York state appeals court in July).
At #RNC2024 @RudyGiuliani says Democrats "get away with murder", where as Republicans are only responsible for "little mistakes"—in response to @abbyvesoulis's question about heated political rhetoric after the weekend's violence.
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 15, 2024
"They can do the worst things in the world.… pic.twitter.com/m4SVFrZYyq
But a few days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Giuliani appears to have memory-holed the part he and other Republicans played in promoting the 2020 election denialism that culminated in the violence on January 6, including the resulting casualties of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and Trump devotee Ashli Babbitt. Giuliani’s argument that left-wing messaging—such as accusing Trump of being a danger to Democracy or a fascist—led to Trump being shot at on July 13 was widely held among the half a dozen politicians and other Republican convention-goers I spoke to.
Waverly Woods, an RNC attendee from Virginia Beach, joked that Biden may as well have pulled the trigger himself. “You can’t kill your opponent because he’s winning,” she says. “Apparently you can search his house and his wife’s underwear, and you can spy on his campaign, but I think killing him might be going a little too far.”
Several interviewees pointed out Biden’s comment in a call to donors a few days before the rally shooting, when he said it was time to “put Trump in the bullseye,” as a prime example of Democrats inciting violence. (“That was pretty bad,” according to Giuliani.) But several convention attendees contended that Democrats have been stoking violence with their rhetoric for years.
“The guy that shot up a [baseball] field in Washington, DC—that was very rhetoric driven,” Alabama convention attendee Bryan Dawson says of the 2017 shooting that severely insured then-Majority Whip Steve Scalise at a Republican baseball practice session. Regarding the shooting at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, Dawson says it was either “a coup at the highest levels, and they were letting him be on the roof to shoot Donald Trump, or it was rhetoric driven—because those are the only two options.”
“Anytime there’s political violence, it’s only going one direction. Anytime there’s cities being burned, it’s one group of people doing it. You never see people with a hat like this out doing anything violent,” adds Dawson, pointing to his red Make America Great Again hat. “We might say say some things or whatever, but it’s nowhere near the rhetoric or the constant propaganda that’s coming from the left.”
Perhaps Dawson forgot about January 6 attack; or about the rally in Ohio this past spring when Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November; or about Trump’s answer to a TIME Magazine question about whether he expected violence after the 2024 election: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, prominent Republicans hold that Trump—who shouted “fight” after he was shot at, and once advocated for shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down along the southern border—is trying to teach Democrats goodwill through his example.
“I think you’ve seen what President Trump has done right now: he hasn’t blamed anybody,” Kevin McCarthy, former Republican Speaker of the House, told Mother Jones Monday. “He’s actually putting a whole new speech together, talking about uniting the nation. I think that’s a very positive step.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate who later endorsed Trump, says Biden is sowing division by fear-mongering about Trump.
“I’ll take [Biden] at his word that he wants to unite the country and tone down the political rhetoric,” Ramaswamy says. “But his entire campaign message has centered around how Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy. And so either [Biden] is doubling down on something that he himself has said is the wrong direction to go, or he doesn’t have a campaign message left.”
“I think that there’s a strong case, to blame the media, to blame the Democrat machine,” adds Ramaswamy. “But I’m not focused on doing that. I would like for us to take the road less traveled, which is to focus on who we are and what we stand for. And I think those are ideals that unite all Americans. And I think the best way we’re going to save this country isn’t by calling on the other stand other side to play by different standards, but to hold ourselves to the standards we expect to hold the country.”
A couple hours after these interviews, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin took the stage at the convention and said Democrats were a threat to the country. In a speech he later said was added to the RNC teleprompter by mistake, Johnson described the Democratic Party’s policies as a “clear and present danger to America” and that Democrats were the party of “weaponized government.”
Enlarge / Ligeia Mare, the second-largest body of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell)
During its T85 Titan flyby on July 24, 2012, the Cassini spacecraft registered an unexpectedly bright reflection on the surface of the lake Kivu Lacus. Its Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) data was interpreted as a roughness on the methane-ethane lake, which could have been a sign of mudflats, surfacing bubbles, or waves.
“Our landscape evolution models show that the shorelines on Titan are most consistent with Earth lakes that have been eroded by waves,” says Rose Palermo, a coastal geomorphologist at St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, who led the study investigating signatures of wave erosion on Titan. The evidence of waves is still inconclusive, but future crewed missions to Titan should probably pack some surfboards just in case.
While waves have been considered the most plausible explanation for reflections visible in Cassini’s VIMS imagery for quite some time, other studies aimed to confirm their presence found no wave activity at all. “Other observations show that the liquid surfaces have been very still in the past, very flat,” Palermo says. “A possible explanation for this is at the time we were observing Titan, the winds were pretty low, so there weren’t many waves at that time. To confirm waves, we would need to have better resolution data,” she adds.
Enlarge / Enhanced Juno image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in 2018. It is likely not the same one observed by Cassini in the 1600s. (credit: Gerald Eichstadt and Sean Doran/CC BY-NC-SA)
The planet Jupiter is particularly known for its so-called Great Red Spot, a swirling vortex in the gas giant's atmosphere that has been around since at least 1831. But how it formed and how old it is remain matters of debate. Astronomers in the 1600s, including Giovanni Cassini, also reported a similar spot in their observations of Jupiter that they dubbed the "Permanent Spot." This prompted scientists to question whether the spot Cassini observed is the same one we see today. We now have an answer to that question: The spots are not the same, according to a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“From the measurements of sizes and movements, we deduced that it is highly unlikely that the current Great Red Spot was the ‘Permanent Spot’ observed by Cassini,” said co-author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain. “The ‘Permanent Spot’ probably disappeared sometime between the mid-18th and 19th centuries, in which case we can now say that the longevity of the Red Spot exceeds 190 years.”
The planet Jupiter was known to Babylonian astronomers in the 7th and 8th centuries BCE, as well as to ancient Chinese astronomers; the latter's observations would eventually give birth to the Chinese zodiac in the 4th century BCE, with its 12-year cycle based on the gas giant's orbit around the Sun. In 1610, aided by the emergence of telescopes, Galileo Galilei famously observed Jupiter's four largest moons, thereby bolstering the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system.
Updated with return to full operational status, removal of obsolete COVID-19 page links, and updates to Do Not Travel Areas.
Reconsider travel to Nigeria due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed gangs. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory.
Do Not Travel to:
Country Summary:
Violent crime – such as armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, hostage taking, roadside banditry, and rape – is common throughout the country. Kidnappings for ransom occur frequently, often targeting dual national citizens who have returned to Nigeria for a visit, as well as U.S. citizens with perceived wealth. Kidnapping gangs have also stopped victims on interstate roads.
Terrorists continue plotting and carrying out attacks in Nigeria. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting shopping centers, malls, markets, hotels, places of worship, restaurants, bars, schools, government installations, transportation hubs, and other places where crowds gather. Terrorists are known to work with local gangs to expand their reach.
There is civil unrest and armed gangs in parts of Southern Nigeria, especially in the Niger Delta and Southeast regions. Armed criminality and gangs, including kidnapping and assaults on Nigerian security services is also pervasive in this region.
Violence can flare up between communities of farmers and herders in rural areas.
The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in many areas of Nigeria due to security conditions.
Read the country information page for additional information on travel to Nigeria.
If you decide to travel to Nigeria:
Borno, Yobe, Kogi, and Northern Adamawa states – Level 4: Do Not Travel
The security situation in these states is fluid and unpredictable due to widespread terrorist activity, inter-communal violence, and kidnapping. Security operations to counter these threats may occur without warning.
Terrorist groups based in the Northeast routinely target humanitarian camps, security forces, churches, schools, mosques, government installations, educational institutions, entertainment venues, and road travelers.
Approximately two million Nigerians have been displaced as a result of the violence in Northeast Nigeria.
Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk Areas.
Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara states – Level 4: Do Not Travel
The security situation in these states is fluid and unpredictable due to widespread inter-communal violence and armed criminality, especially kidnapping and roadside banditry. Security operations to counter these threats may occur without warning.
Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk Areas.
Abia, Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu, Imo, and Rivers states (with the exception of Port Harcourt) – Level 4: Do Not Travel
Crime is rampant throughout Southern Nigeria, and there is a heightened risk of kidnapping, violent civil unrest, and armed gangs.
Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk Areas.
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