Trump Highlights Opponents’ Violence While Overlooking His Own Words

Repub­li­can Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s plea for peo­ple to stop turn­ing Char­lie Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion into a polit­i­cal food fight appears to have fall­en on deaf ears among many on the right.

Instead of heed­ing his call, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his MAGA allies have dou­bled down, fram­ing the killing as fur­ther proof that polit­i­cal vio­lence is over­whelm­ing­ly the domain of the left.

“When you look at the prob­lems, the prob­lem is on the left,” the pres­i­dent told reporters Sun­day. “It’s not on the right.”

Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance echoed that sen­ti­ment while guest-host­ing Kirk’s pod­cast on Mon­day:

“While our side of the aisle cer­tain­ly has its cra­zies, it is a sta­tis­ti­cal fact that most of the lunatics in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics today are proud mem­bers of the far left.”

It’s fair to exam­ine whether the killer’s moti­va­tions had polit­i­cal roots, and some evi­dence does appear to con­nect sus­pect Tyler Robin­son with left-wing caus­es. Yet the full pic­ture remains incom­plete, and many of the details are still unclear.

What is clear, how­ev­er, is that Trump and his allies are cher­ry-pick­ing evi­dence while ignor­ing the broad­er real­i­ty of polit­i­cal vio­lence in Amer­i­ca. They are also cast­ing stones from a glass house when it comes to the role of incen­di­ary rhetoric in fuel­ing such tragedies.

For more than a decade, Trump has pep­pered his speech­es with vio­lent under­tones and explic­it calls for ret­ri­bu­tion, often sug­gest­ing that force is jus­ti­fied when used by his sup­port­ers. That pat­tern hasn’t slowed — in fact, just last Fri­day, he once again allud­ed to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “tak­ing mat­ters into our own hands” if the polit­i­cal sys­tem fails him.

By down­play­ing vio­lence on the right and weaponiz­ing iso­lat­ed cas­es on the left, Trump and his move­ment risk not only dis­tort­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion but also nor­mal­iz­ing the very cli­mate of hos­til­i­ty they claim to con­demn.

The recent his­to­ry of vio­lent polit­i­cal episodes

The first thing to note is that Democ­rats, too, have been fre­quent tar­gets of vio­lence — and in many cas­es, the right wing has been the source of it.

In June, two Demo­c­ra­t­ic Min­neso­ta state law­mak­ers were shot, one of whom lat­er died. In April, there was an arson attempt at the home of Penn­syl­va­nia Gov. Josh Shapiro, anoth­er Demo­c­rat. In Decem­ber 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2023, a failed Repub­li­can can­di­date in New Mex­i­co orches­trat­ed dri­ve-by shoot­ings at the homes of sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic offi­cials. That same year, Nan­cy Pelosi’s hus­band, Paul Pelosi, was bru­tal­ly attacked with a ham­mer by a man who said he was hunt­ing for the then–House Speak­er. And back in 2020, fed­er­al author­i­ties foiled a vio­lent plot to kid­nap Demo­c­ra­t­ic Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer.

Per­haps the most infa­mous case came on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, when Trump sup­port­ers stormed the U.S. Capi­tol in an effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results.

All of these episodes have tak­en place with­in just the last five years.

Yet in sev­er­al of these instances — includ­ing the Min­neso­ta shoot­ings, the attack on Paul Pelosi, and even the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion — promi­nent Repub­li­cans were quick to sug­gest, often with­out evi­dence, that Trump’s oppo­nents were some­how respon­si­ble. These claims have repeat­ed­ly proven pre­ma­ture or mis­lead­ing. As is often the case in tragedies of this nature, the moti­va­tions of the per­pe­tra­tors are com­plex and not always clear­ly ide­o­log­i­cal.

In fact, Trump him­self has shown lit­tle will­ing­ness to acknowl­edge the full pic­ture of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lence. On Mon­day, when asked about the assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Min­neso­ta House Speak­er Melis­sa Hort­man just three months ago, he ini­tial­ly admit­ted he was “not famil­iar” with it. Asked why he didn’t order flags to be low­ered to half-staff — as he had for Char­lie Kirk — Trump replied that he would have done so if Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Tim Walz had request­ed it.

Even when it comes to the most high-pro­file act of polit­i­cal vio­lence in recent years — last July’s assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump him­self — his allies have rushed to cast blame on the left. But the avail­able facts don’t sup­port that con­clu­sion. The alleged shoot­er, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can, and his exact motives remain unclear.

The point isn’t to argue which side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum is “more vio­lent.” It’s that the real­i­ty of polit­i­cal vio­lence in Amer­i­ca is far more com­pli­cat­ed than Trump’s selec­tive fram­ing sug­gests.

Nev­er­the­less, in his video mes­sage fol­low­ing Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion last week, Trump once again paint­ed a one-sided pic­ture. He cit­ed his own assas­si­na­tion attempt as an exam­ple of “rad­i­cal left polit­i­cal vio­lence” — a claim that has not been proven — while ignor­ing the many recent exam­ples of vio­lence car­ried out by indi­vid­u­als linked to the right.

This pat­tern high­lights a broad­er issue: by exag­ger­at­ing threats from the left while down­play­ing or dis­miss­ing vio­lence on the right, Trump and his allies are dis­tort­ing the public’s under­stand­ing of polit­i­cal vio­lence and inflam­ing the very divi­sions that fuel it.

Trump’s and MAGA’s own rhetoric has often been quite vio­lent

The oth­er key part of Trump’s and his allies’ polit­i­cal fram­ing is that attacks like the one on Kirk are the result of the left’s sup­pos­ed­ly extreme rhetoric.

They’ve often cit­ed those who com­pared Trump and Kirk to Nazis or called them fas­cists.

“This kind of rhetoric is direct­ly respon­si­ble for the ter­ror­ism that we’re see­ing in our coun­try today, and it must stop right now,” Trump said Wednes­day.

Repub­li­can Sen. Katie Britt of Alaba­ma, appear­ing on Fox News on Sun­day, blamed the media for air­ing claims that Trump is a fas­cist or like Adolf Hitler, call­ing it “the rhetoric that led us to this moment.”

But the “fas­cist” fram­ing is a great exam­ple of the glass house from which this claim is being cast. In fact, Trump has spent years label­ing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents fas­cists, both before and after his two assas­si­na­tion attempts

And to the extent Nazi com­par­isons are beyond the pale, that’s also a stan­dard Trump hasn’t abid­ed. In 2017, he com­pared the US intel­li­gence community’s actions to “Nazi Ger­many.” In May 2024, he said the Democ­rats were run­ning a “Gestapo admin­is­tra­tion” – a ref­er­ence to the Nazi secret police.

The larg­er point, though, is that Trump’s own rhetoric has been remark­ably vio­lent. He and his MAGA allies have often been rather cal­lous and cav­a­lierabout polit­i­cal vio­lence when it wasn’t their side tar­get­ed.

Per­haps the most remark­able exam­ple in recent years was the Paul Pelosi attack, which became a punch­line for many, includ­ing Trump.

Many promi­nent Repub­li­cans made sim­i­lar­ly flip­pant com­ments. Don­ald Trump Jr. at one point approv­ing­ly retweet­ed a pic­ture of a ham­mer atop a pair of under­wear with the mes­sage, “Got my Paul Pelosi Hal­loween cos­tume ready.” (Pelosi was attacked in his home in the mid­dle of the night.)

Some oth­er exam­ples:

• Trump last year mused about the prospect of Liz Cheney being fired upon.
• He once sug­gest­ed “Sec­ond Amend­ment peo­ple” might be able to pre­vent Hillary Clin­ton from being able to pick judges.
• In 2020, he repost­ed a video of a sup­port­er say­ing, “The only good Demo­c­rat is a dead Demo­c­rat.”
• While he was out of office, he repost­ed a sup­port­er who warned of 80 mil­lion peo­ple ris­ing up to “phys­i­cal­ly fight” for Trump.
• Dur­ing the 2020 cam­paign, he made light of a dan­ger­ous scene in which his sup­port­ers sur­round­ed a Biden cam­paign bus on the high­way. “I LOVE TEXAS!” Trump post­ed.
• In 2018, he pub­licly praised then-Mon­tana Rep. Greg Gian­forte after the GOP con­gress­man assault­ed a reporter, say­ing, “any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy.”
• He has repeat­ed­ly, sug­ges­tive­ly allud­ed to the prospect of his own sup­port­ers ris­ing up in jus­ti­fied vio­lence, includ­ing over his indict­ments and his base­less claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud. His com­ments often men­tion the prospect of riots. At the same time, he’s also said he doesn’t sup­port vio­lence and that he hopes his sup­port­ers stay peace­ful.