On Wednesday morning, news broke that a California man was arrested for attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home. The man was intercepted before he was able to break into the justice’s house. He was carrying a gun, pepper spray, and burglary tools. There’s also no ambiguity about what his intentions were–given he admitted he was there to kill Kavanaugh.

The man was also reportedly motivated by the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, which brings us to the obvious question: Did Democrats incite this attempted attack?

Let’s recall that top Democrats, from Chuck Schumer to Elizabeth Warren, have used violent rhetoric in response to the possibility of Roe being overturned.

FLASHBACK: Chuck Schumer in 2020: “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you."pic.twitter.com/35rcQVp3sY

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 8, 2022

Will Federal Authorities be giving Elizabeth Warren a visit for inciting an insurrection? pic.twitter.com/9Max7ZlRec

— Mikel Crump 🇺🇸 (@TheMikelCrump) May 3, 2022

When you tell people that the justices are fascists looking to take away your “right” to kill a baby, while insisting that they must be stopped, is it any surprise some people might take that to the extreme? That’s what appears to have happened here, and Ted Cruz let Democrats have it over their inciteful rhetoric.

Biden and the Dems need to stop their irresponsible and incendiary rhetoric on Roe and condemn the violence coming from their supporters. 2/x

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 8, 2022

While Cruz’s call for those on the left to take things down a notch is laudable, he’s probably spitting into the wind. You can expect Democrats to obfuscate from the dangerous situation that occurred, with it only garnering a passing mention in the press (enough to say “we covered it”). By contrast, if this were a liberal justice, it’d be used as an indictment of the entire right, with sweeping generalizations and demands from every GOP politician alive to condemn what happened.

The simple fact of the matter is that Democrats never want to play by their own rules. They want to be able to assert that using the word “fight” is violent incitement when it’s Trump saying it, but when it’s Warren saying it, it’s just her showing passion. When a Republican uses any kind of physical imagery in a political speech, that’s incitement, but when Schumer does it, it’s just an expression.

As an exercise in frustration, just try to imagine what the response would be if Cruz had said to Sonia Sotomayer that she would “reap the whirlwind” so hard that “you won’t know what hit you.” We’d be having congressional hearings over it. But again, the rules don’t apply to Democrats.

Hopefully, Kavanaugh doesn’t take these threats lying down. If anything, this should strengthen his resolve. For the court to be intimated at this point would destroy it as an institution. That can’t be allowed to happen. Cruz is also spot-on. Democrats own the heated environment they’ve created, and it’s up to them to take the temperature down. If you keep telling people they are going to “lose their democracy” every time the left doesn’t get its way, bad things are bound to happen.