On Sunday, an unhinged man toting an assault weapon somehow got within a few hundred yards of Republican nominee Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course and was, thankfully, apprehended alive by Secret Service agents.
It's the second attempt on Trump's life in three months, and while Republicans are predictably blaming Democratic rhetoric about democracy, the truth is that America has become a violent tinderbox since the former president commandeered our political system in 2015, and nothing about that will change as long as he maintains his grip on the Republican Party, and by extension, on our collective imagination. It's a miracle that no one has successfully killed a major American political figure during this period, and we should not pretend that this good fortune will last forever.
To be absolutely clear, Trump is not to blame for the attempts on his life, nor did he deserve them. Even the most incendiary demagogues should be safe from political violence, because condoning it leads to a civic death spiral that is very hard to pull out of. The runaway logic of tit-for-tat assassinations eventually takes on a life of its own, with participants largely unaware of what exactly precipitated all the mayhem in the first place. You do not want this here.
But Trump does bear considerable responsibility for the general climate of amped-up tension, circus-like theatrics and incipient bloodshed that characterizes American political life right now through his relentless, divisive lying, scapegoating, and escalation. Just over the past week, the repugnant, racist antics of Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have put a bullseye on a small Ohio city that had been minding its own business before becoming a national flashpoint over immigration. Springfield has been the subject of Nazi-like rhetoric and violent threats against public officials. There have even been bomb threats against public institutions like schools. Right now, kids are staying home for the second straight day thanks to Trump's irresponsible demonizing of Haitian immigrants.
This is nothing new. Below are examples of political violence in America since 2015: a man tried to murder members of Congress while they played a baseball game, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.); would-be assassins tried to gain entry to the house of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the incumbent president incited a mob of his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol during the counting of Electoral votes in 2021, intending to harm various members of Congress; a group of men were caught plotting to kidnap Michigan's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer; a man broke into the house of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intending to kill her and seriously wounded her husband Paul instead; a wave of far-right bomb threats against public libraries and children's hospitals unfolded in 2022-2023 after Republicans ginned up a moral panic about "grooming"; and now there have been two separate assassination attempts against the former president of the United States during his campaign to become the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms in office.
This is to say nothing of the endless wave of intimidation and threats against public servants like election officials, librarians, teachers, and others who have been the true social hallmark of the MAGAzoic era. In Trump's America, no civil servant is safe from ceaseless anger and conspiracy-driven outrage deliberately ginned up by Trump and his colossal media network of sycophants, grifters, and hangers-on.
Once you unleash these forces, you cannot hope to contain them.
Trying to pin this on the Democrats and journalists who are correctly pointing out the threat that Donald Trump poses to the political order is like blaming the firefighters instead of the fire starters.
Noting accurately that "the house is in flames and the arsonist is promising to burn down the whole block" isn't the problem. In a country brimming with AR-15s and angry people radicalized by a steady diet of huckster-driven, algorithm-curated content, we really shouldn't be surprised that politicians have become targets just as often as schoolchildren, worshippers, parade-attendees and concertgoers.
I'm glad that Donald Trump was not killed yesterday and hope that he will be able to enjoy a long, quiet retirement at Mar-A-Lago beginning on Nov. 6.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
