On Sunday evening, President Joe Biden Addressed the nation From the Oval Office, he condemned Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Biden offered condolences to the family of former fire chief Cory Comperatore, who was fatally shot at a rally. He offered Trump good wishes. He urged Americans to resolve their differences at the ballot box and at the debate stage and not turn politics into “a literal battlefield or, God forbid, a killing field.”
But the most important part of Biden’s speech was when he contextualized what happened at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania: that this was not an isolated incident of political violence, but part of a sustained surge.
Violence is never the answer. Whether it’s the shooting of lawmakers from both parties, the violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, the brutal assault on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s wife, the information and threats against election officials, the kidnapping plot against a sitting governor, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. This kind of violence, or any violence, has no place in America. End. No exceptions. We cannot allow this violence to become normal.
Biden’s assessment is 100% correct. What happened at Trump’s rally was part of a series of events. They didn’t start with Trump, but there has certainly been an increase in violent political rhetoric since he came to power in 2015. As PBS NewsHour reported in 2021, violence “is becoming a dangerous feature of the Republican campaign and the party’s message.”
That doesn’t mean Democrats are completely innocent of calls for violent action, but there’s a difference between someone calling for violence on Twitter and someone in power making the same call, especially if that person is in the White House.
Now, Republicans are trying to use last weekend’s assassination attempt politically, portraying Democrats as the primary, if not the only, perpetrators of the violence. But research on incidents between 2021 and 2023 shows that: Reuters It shows exactly what you might expect: “In that year, deadly political violence came more often from the American right than from the left.”
The Reuters numbers confirm exactly what Biden said in his speech. According to Reuters, the United States is currently experiencing “the most sustained political violence since the decade of upheaval that began in the late 1960s.” The violence has come from many different parts of the political spectrum, including several property crimes linked to protests that began on the left. But when it comes to violence against people, most of it has been committed “by suspects motivated by right-wing political beliefs and ideology.”
It’s not difficult to understand why.
Political violence is unacceptable. However, Violence against children in schools. So that’s why too Domestic violence. Violence happens to anyone, anywhere, and in any situation.
Trump’s attempted shooting is not getting attention because it is an anomaly in an America overflowing with people who think they can solve all their problems with guns and bullets. It is getting attention because it is Trump.
If politicians want to stop people from climbing onto rooftops and shooting into crowds, it would be a good idea to tone down their political rhetoric. And doing so on Christmas cards, pins, campaign ads, and everyday rhetoric that celebrates the use of lethal force to resolve conflict is a good place to start.
But a much better idea would be to stop allowing combat weapons into Americans’ public squares, streets, stores and homes. Stop turning America itself into the “battlefield” or “murder scene” that Biden has warned against.
What happened to Trump is unfortunately not uncommon in the United States, no matter how much media attention it gets.
But it has to be that way.
