Trump assassination attempt brings fresh scrutiny to violent political rhetoric

An assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign rally Saturday evening in western Pennsylvania, comes at a high-stakes, highly volatile moment in American politics.

The shooting – which pierced Mr. Trump’s right ear, killed a spectator, and critically wounded two others – raised concerns about an escalation of political violence ahead of Election Day. But it also led to a temporary truce in the 2024 presidential race and, for a moment at least, produced a consensus of sorts among some political leaders. We are better than this, many said – calling for a change of tone not only in the campaign, but also more broadly in public discourse. 

In an Oval Office address Sunday evening, President Joe Biden called on the nation to “lower the temperature in our politics,” adding that “we can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” Earlier in the day, he announced an independent review of security at the rally. 

“Obviously, we can’t go on like this as a society,” Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on NBC earlier in the day. “We’ve got to turn the temperature down.”

Many other Democrats and Republicans alike called for calm. Mr. Trump, for his part, signaled courage. Shortly after the shooting, as a swarm of Secret Service agents tried to hustle him off the stage, the former president raised his fist defiantly and mouthed “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It was an instantly iconic image at a defining moment in American political history.

It’s also a sign of the times.

“There is such visceral hatred pertaining to politics and political leaders today, and the invective has been normalized,” says Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “What we need is unity of message with condemnation of political violence as a threat to democracy, irrespective of who is targeted.”

On Sunday, the former president urged the nation via his social media platform to “stand United.” In a statement soon after the shooting, President Biden – who was attending church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when Mr. Trump was attacked – said: “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.” 

Reality is more complicated. Hyperpolarization is a hallmark of the current-day political scene, and assassinations have formed some of America’s most searing moments – perhaps foremost the 1865 killing of Abraham Lincoln, widely seen as America’s greatest president. In the modern era, people of a certain age remember where they were when President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in a Dallas motorcade in 1963 and when President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington in 1981, almost fatally. 

The killing, too, of President Kennedy’s brother and then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 – two months after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee – resonates today. Mr. Kennedy’s son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an independent presidential candidate, and on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that he had granted Mr. Kennedy Secret Service protection at the president’s direction. This was after repeated requests from Mr. Kennedy.

The analogies to 1968 are significant. As with today, the era was full of ferment over race and social justice. And just as the Democratic convention in Chicago was marked by violent protests over the Vietnam War so, too, are the 2024 conventions preparing for potential unrest. 

Progressive protesters have been gearing up to make noise at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, albeit at a remove from the convention site, over such issues as abortion, wars abroad, and LGBTQ+ rights. But their big target will be the Democratic convention in August, again in Chicago.  

FBI identifies shooter

The FBI identified the alleged shooter, who was killed almost immediately, as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. At press time, his motive was unknown. The perpetrator’s evident ability to shoot Mr. Trump also raised questions about security, particularly the U.S. Secret Service. 

One witness told the BBC he alerted authorities to a man with a rifle climbing a nearby building minutes before shots were fired. A Boston Globe reporter said he “noticed movement on the roof of what appeared to be a barn behind the stage” about 25 minutes before Mr. Trump took the stage. 

Amid the weekend drama, Mr. Biden changed plans on the fly. Within hours of the shooting, the president left Delaware and returned to the White House, and his team took down campaign ads. The president also spoke with Mr. Trump by phone, according to the White House.

Mr. Trump – the presumptive Republican nominee for president – announced that he would still attend his party’s convention in Milwaukee, which starts Monday. His wife, former first lady Melania Trump, made an appeal for calm in an open letter posted on the social platform X. 

“America, the fabric of our gentle nation is tattered, but our courage and common sense must ascend and bring us back together as one,” she wrote.

But wider expressions of political vitriol have hardly abated. Almost immediately, Trump allies – from U.S. senators to rallygoers – blamed liberals and the media for Saturday’s attack. 

“Let’s be clear,” wrote GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina on social media. “This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”

Reagan forgave would-be assassin

Some assassination attempts against U.S. presidents have come despite relative comity between the two major parties. President Reagan, a Republican, and then-Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill used to share a drink after hours. After Mr. Reagan was shot – by a man with mental health problems, not political motivations – the speaker visited the president in the hospital and prayed for him by his bedside. 

The friendship offered a pathway for communication and cooperation – and a lesson in leadership that could “go very far” if practiced in today’s culture of political animosity, says James Rosebush, a former deputy assistant to Mr. Reagan in the White House.

“It’s one thing to disagree, but it’s another thing to be violent, or violently opposed to the other individual’s beliefs. It should be cooperative,” Mr. Rosebush says, describing Mr. Reagan as an eternal optimist, with “zero ego,” who was able to forgive his would-be assassin.

The potentially deadly attack on Mr. Trump is the first on a U.S. president or presidential candidate since Mr. Reagan, though numerous plots have been foiled over the years. “Political violence has been rising over the last eight years against politicians of all stripes,” says Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on the  intersection of democracy and security.

Ms. Kleinfeld says it’s mostly been coming from the right, but also from the left. But, she adds, “it’s been about equal against politicians of the right and the left, because people are attacking moderates on their own side in order to force everyone into a polarized edge.”

The congressional baseball shooting of 2017, which critically wounded Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise – now House majority leader – was perpetrated by a supporter of progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who condemned the violence. In 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head at a constituent event in her home district.

After the Trump shooting on Saturday, there have been calls for congressional hearings and an investigation into the Secret Service’s apparent failure to secure the site. In a statement to the Monitor, a former director of both the FBI and CIA expressed confidence in the ability of the relevant agencies to sort out what went wrong. 

“After the assassination of President Kennedy, the United States established very clear procedures on how future attempts on the life of a president should be handled,” said William Webster, who was director of the FBI during the Reagan assassination attempt. 

“When Reagan was shot, we at the FBI had very clear direction,” he said. “I’m confident that the United States Secret Service, FBI, and law enforcement are working as well as possible during what is always a very challenging period, especially at the beginning of such an investigation.” 

Staff writer Francine Kiefer contributed reporting from Pasadena, California. Staff writer Christa Case Bryant also contributed reporting from Washington. 

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect ongoing coverage.