The Trump Assassination Attempt Represents a Dark New Chapter in American Politics

The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through our country, but to professional observers of polarization and division in our country, the brazen act of violence is not necessarily surprising. Political violence has been on the rise in our country for a decade now, and this election cycle has been defined by threats issued by political extremists across the aisle. The attack on Trump is far from the first assassination attempt to darken American society over the past 20 years. 

High-profile attacks have proliferated, including against: Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in 2011; Vice President Mike Pence who was targeted on Jan. 6, 2021; and Paul Pelosi, who was severely injured in his San Francisco home when an assailant came looking for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mercifully, those attacks did not succeed in killing their primary target, a stroke of fortune not shared in the targeting of Japan’s former Prime Minister or two members of parliament in the United Kingdom. Nikki Haley, prior to her defeat in the Republican primary, had requested Secret Service protection, evidence that serious threats were already characterizing this particular campaign. According to scholars Pete Simi, Gina Ligon, Seamus Hughes, and Natalie Standridge, “A review of federal charges for the past decade highlights that the number of threats to public officials is growing.” Moreover, they add that “A preliminary review of cases from 2023 and 2024 shows that the number of federal prosecutions is on pace to hit new record highs. The rising threat level may produce significant consequences for the U.S. democratic system of governance.”

Law enforcement officials have not yet offered a motive for the assassination attempt on Trump, but they have said they are investigating this shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. (It has been reported that the shooter was a registered Republican who had once donated to a progressive organization, and there is thus far no apparent manifesto or immediate claim of allegiance.) As we wait to learn more—and we should all resist the temptation to speculate or spread conspiracy theories—it is a moment to consider recent history and the ways in which political violence has played out all too frequently in this country.

The rise in domestic terrorism that has blighted the American heartland over the past several years has been perpetrated predominately by the violent far right. For example, according to the ADL, every extremist-related killing in 2023 was perpetrated by violent extremists on the right, continuing a pattern: “Of the 442 people killed at the hands of extremists from 2014 to 2023, 336 (or 76%) were killed by right-wing extremists of one sort or another.” The violence underlying the data includes white supremacist terrorist attacks at a historically Black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015; a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2018; a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019; and a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022.

While far-right terrorists—white supremacists and anti-government extremists—have generally targeted minority communities in places of worship or community centers, extremists on the far-left have conversely preferred political figures. In fact, in their hysteria over almost exclusively nonlethal Antifa and Black Lives Matter militancy in American cities in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Republicans overlooked a far more serious and dangerous far-left threat against their prominent politicians and other public figures perceived to represent the tip of the spear of right-wing policies. In June 2017, a Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire at the Republican team practice for the annual Congressional baseball game, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise and five others. And in June 2022, a 26-year-old from California traveled to the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, hoping to halt the seemingly inevitable striking down of Roe v. Wade. He called the police when he arrived and was arrested.

Fortunately, those plots all ultimately failed (albeit with bystanders tragically paying a price, as in Butler, Penn., on Saturday), but those failures are due to luck, not due to a lack of intent or capability.

This context, of course, does not change the thunderbolt this assassination attempt delivered directly into the heart of the American political landscape, regardless of an ultimate motive. The attack will immediately go down as one of the most serious acts of political violence in the U.S. since 9/11, and the most consequential assassination attempt in this country since the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. And at this point, a concrete motive might be seen as a footnote on a broader story that already speaks volumes about the modern American political wasteland. Perhaps the only truly shocking part of the plot is the catastrophic failure of the Secret Service to protect the Republican presidential candidate and former President of the United States. Postmortems will be conducted to answer the question of how someone was able to lay down a direct line of fire on a political rally. At a moment where further acts of violence, including against election candidates, seem almost inevitable, law enforcement simply must do a far better job of protecting those in the firing line.

But one thing is clear: politicians also need to find a way to lower the ever-rising temperature in our country that creates the permissive environment for acts of terroristic violence. Our nation’s future depends on it.