Don't Forget Who Is Most to Blame For These Violent Times

It's like climate change: Trump may not be solely responsible for any one act of violence, but he's the reason things have gotten so bad.

After right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, we quite predictably heard cries for vengeance from many of the most influential voices on the right. But among more mainstream politicians and commentators (granting that “mainstream” is an outdated concept, a topic for another day), the prevailing sentiment has been as follows: Political violence is never acceptable. American politics has become dangerously overheated, and we all need to turn down the temperature. We should be able to debate our differences with civility and respect.

All fine sentiments. It is indeed important to discuss the generalized atmosphere of anger and extremism that encourages disturbed individuals to decide that violence is an appropriate and worthwhile form of political action. But I fear that the most basic and obvious fact is being lost right now:

The single most important, influential, and potent factor encouraging political violence in America today is Donald Trump.

We can argue about whether Trump is, in the broad sweep of history, more symptom than cause of our political degradation. We can debate the extent to which he is a manifestation of the American right’s fascistic impulses, or whether he convinced the right to turn to fascism. But every discussion of the violent era we have entered must start and end with Trump.

Just as it’s difficult to prove definitively that a particular hurricane was caused by climate change, not every act of violence is solely Trump’s fault. But he is the reason we’re in the situation we’re in.

Trump has always advocated violence as a political tool

Trump has been an advocate of violence from the moment he became a political figure — both state violence and vigilante violence, always directed at whoever he doesn’t like, whether it’s alleged criminals or liberals who protest him. Running in 2016, he told crowds at his rallies again and again that protesters should be beaten up. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK?”, he said. “I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you.”

Immediately, Trump’s supporters at all levels gleefully accepted the permission he offered them to celebrate political violence when it was directed at their perceived enemies. They cheered and laughed when a thuggish congressional candidate assaulted a reporter for asking him a question about health care policy; that thug is now governor of Montana. Trump joked about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being nearly killed by an assailant who broke into their home wielding a hammer; conservatives on TV yucked it up about the attack. The answer to crime, Trump said in 2024, is “one really violent day” in which police would be unleashed to brutalize anyone they like.

Or consider Kyle Rittenhouse, a figure I’ve written about before. When protests of police misconduct ramped up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rittenhouse got his hands on an assault rifle and went there looking for trouble, which he found, killing two people and wounding a third. Rittenhouse was eventually acquitted on grounds of self-defense, and political leaders who abhor violence might have said that was an appropriate outcome to his criminal case, but still acknowledged that he was a dumb kid who did a dumb thing.

That is not, however, how the American right at its highest levels reacted to the Rittenhouse story. He got a fawning interview on Fox News by Tucker Carlson, then the network’s brightest star. He was invited to Mar-a-Lago to hang out with the former and future president:

And he spoke at multiple conservative gatherings, including an appearance at a December 2021 Turning Point USA event, where Charlie Kirk introduced him (“Get loud for Kyle Rittenhouse!”). The American right made Rittenhouse into a hero and a role model for others to follow not despite the fact that he killed two people, but precisely because he did.

In short, far too few of the most influential voices on the right will say even at a moment like this one that all political violence is bad, for the simple reason that it isn’t what they believe. And Trump leads the charge with his own vulgar bloodlust.

Trump’s repulsively unpresidential reaction to Kirk’s murder

In all the voluminous coverage of Kirk’s murder, you may have missed the appalling statement Trump gave from the Oval Office about it:

At moments of tragedy, we expect the president to call for calm, to invoke fundamental national values, and to at least express the idea that we can come together in unity and seek hope in dark times, even if hope is difficult to find. That is not what Trump did. Instead, he essentially promised violent retribution against anyone who opposes him;

It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

“Violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible”? Are you kidding me? There has never been a president — there may never have been any national politician — who spent as much time demonizing those with whom he disagreed, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible, as Donald Trump has.

He then pledge to target anyone on the “radical left” who “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” listing off occasions in which Republicans and only Republicans were targets. The copious examples of Democrats and liberals targeted for violence — the state legislators murdered in Minnesota, the firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor’s home, the attempted kidnapping of the governor of Michigan, the attack on the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta — none of these count, because the targets weren’t Republicans. Nor does the most important act of political violence in recent history, the January 6 insurrection, which occurred at Trump’s behest, and he has spent years celebrating as a glorious outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm (and of course, he pardoned every last violent goon who participated, even those who beat police officers within an inch of their lives).

Trump is not calling for the violence to end and seeking to calm the nation, because he doesn’t want the violence to end and he doesn’t want the nation to be calm. Nor do his most important supporters, many of whom are right now calling for violent retribution for Kirk’s death.

Political violence is a complex problem, and a great many people can be blamed for contributing to it. But no one bears more responsibility than Donald Trump, and we should never forget it for a moment.

Thank you for reading The Cross Section. This site has no paywall, so I depend on the generosity of readers to sustain the work I present here. If you find what you read valuable and would like it to continue, consider becoming a paid subscriber.