President Donald Trump’s mollifying tone following Saturday night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has since given way to accusations and finger-pointing from top administration officials who say Democrats and the media are largely to blame for the state of political violence in the U.S.

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, White House communications director Steven Cheung and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday bashed journalists and congressional Democrats for what they called divisive rhetoric.

“The political violence and rhetoric has got to stop,” Blanche said, while suggesting that many members of the media had been complicit.

“Many people in this room, if we’re going to be honest about it, have done it,” Blanche said to a room full of reporters. “They’re just as guilty as a lot of people on X when you have reporters, when you have media, media just being overly critical and calling the president horrible names for no reason and without evidence, without proof.”

Cheung said in a statement to NBC News about Trump’s future campaign travel plans that the president “continues to have a robust schedule and nothing will ever deter him from delivering historic wins for the American people. The violent rhetoric from deranged liberals and biased media outlets against the President manifested itself on Saturday night.”

And Leavitt said during the daily press briefing that “this political violence stems from a systemic demonization of [Trump] and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat party and even some in the media.”

“This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment,” she added.

Their remarks stood in sharp contrast to how Trump spoke to reporters in the White House briefing room shortly after the shooting, when he called on “all Americans to recommit with their hearts in resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences.”

“I will say you had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives. Those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not. But yet everybody in that room, big crowd, record-setting crowd, there was a record-setting group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and coming together. I watched and I was very, very impressed by that,” Trump said.

He added that he had initially planned on tearing into the press during his planned dinner remarks, but that things changed after the shooting incident.

“I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’m going to be probably very nice. I’ll be very boring the next time, but we’re going to have a great event. And you did a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters.

That unifying message did not even extend into Monday. The president lambasted Democrats during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, saying, “the hate speech of the Democrats much more so is very dangerous.”

The following day, Trump also blamed ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, condemning the comedian for a joke he made last week in which he said first lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”

“I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Melania Trump also blasted Kimmel for “hateful and violent rhetoric” which she said “is intended to divide our country.”

“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” the first lady wrote on X.

ABC, The Walt Disney Co., and Kimmel’s publicist did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kimmel was briefly taken off the air last year following pressure from Trump and his allies, after he criticized Republicans following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Several accounts associated with Republican groups also sought to blame Democrats.

An X account managed by the Republican National Committee posted a lengthy thread Monday detailing what it called “examples of Democrats’ violent rhetoric,” including videos of multiple lawmakers and officials calling Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to democracy,” among other expressions.

Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who was also criticized by Leavitt on Monday, said later in the day that he didn’t give “a damn” about criticism over an X post from last week when he said, “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” in describing Virginia voters passing Democrats’ redistricting plan.

“Political violence in any form, directed at anyone, whether that’s the right, the left or the center is unacceptable. Period, full stop. The notion that any of us are concerned with so-called criticism from these phony Republicans as it relates to anything that has been said, certainly, as it relates to the comment related to ‘maximum warfare everywhere, all the time’ in connection with the redistricting battle that Republicans launched, I stand by it. You can continue to criticize me for it. I don’t give a damn about your criticism,” Jeffries told reporters.

Trump has oftentimes engaged in heated rhetoric. NBC News previously reported that nearly two dozen elected officials were subjected to real-world threats after Trump publicly criticized them. Last year Trump called for certain members of Congress to be executed, saying they were committing “seditious behavior” that’s “punishable by death.” He later walked back those remarks.

Democrats largely condemned the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, thanking law enforcement and pointing to their attempts to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, where the Secret Service is housed. Democrats have floated a plan to fund all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

The suspect in Saturday night’s shooting — Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of California —faces charges that include attempting to assassinate the president.

Trump allies lobbed similar criticisms at Democrats after the first two assassination attempts against Trump, in 2024, with some Republicans blaming Democrats for the violence, citing Democratic arguments that Trump was a threat to democracy.

There is no evidence that those arguments led to the assassination attempts against Trump.