By Joseph Tanfani and Peter Eisler
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Within hours of the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump, many of his supporters were blaming Democrats, seeking to upend the narrative of who was fueling America’s heated political rhetoric as political violence hit record levels.
From mainstream Republicans to far-right conspiracy theorists, a consistent message emerged: President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders set the stage for Saturday’s shootings by portraying Trump as a dictator who poses a grave threat to democracy.
But a Reuters analysis of more than 200 politically motivated violent incidents between 2021 and 2023 paints a different picture: That year, deadly political violence was more likely to come from the American right than the left.
According to a Reuters report published last year, the United States is in the midst of its longest period of political violence since the decade of unrest that began in the late 1960s. This violence has come from across the ideological spectrum, with large-scale property attacks occurring during left-wing political demonstrations. But attacks on people, from beatings to murder, have mostly been carried out by suspects acting according to right-wing political beliefs and ideologies.
In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s attack, right-wing websites were abuzz with claims that left-wing rhetoric motivated Trump’s assailant, with many commentators blaming the Biden administration for the shooting or promoting unfounded conspiracy theories, including claims that a shadowy “deep state” cabal within the government orchestrated it.
“Please don’t think this is the last attempt to kill Trump. The Deep State has no other choice now,” said a user on the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win. “Borderline martial law measures are needed to get the country on the right track,” another wrote. One user called for a federal purge. “It’s us or them.”
Trump’s Republican allies pointed specifically to comments Biden made on July 8 at a meeting with donors where he spoke about his dismal debate performance.
“I have one job and one thing only: defeat Donald Trump,” Biden said. “We’re done talking about debates. It’s time to put Mr. Trump at the center of the target. He’s spent the last 10 days doing nothing but driving around in a golf cart.”
Some Republicans seized on the “bullseye” comment as an example of Biden evoking violent imagery to describe the November presidential election, and criticized him and other Democrats for portraying the former president as a threat to democracy and the country.
“For weeks, Democratic leaders have been stoking absurd hysteria that the reelection of Donald Trump would mean the end of American democracy,” Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, wrote on X. “Clearly, we have seen far-left lunatics take violent rhetoric in the past. This inflammatory rhetoric must stop.”
Scalise himself was a victim of violence seven years ago, wounded when a left-wing gunman opened fire on the Congressional Republican baseball team while it was practicing.
Other Republican politicians joined the fray.
“Joe Biden gave the order,” Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., posted on X on Saturday, without any evidence to back up the claim. “The Republican District Attorney of Butler County, Pennsylvania, should immediately indict Joseph R. Biden for soliciting assassination.”
“False Equivalence”
Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communication at American University who studies political violence, said Biden’s criticism of Trump as a national threat is not the same as the violent rhetoric used by Trump’s right-wing supporters. “It’s a bit of a false equivalence,” Braddock said.
Trump supporters have increased threatening and harassing communications against election staff, judges and other officials.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Reuters documented hundreds of threats against local election officials by Trump supporters enraged by his false claims that the election was stolen. A Reuters investigation published in May found that violent threats against judges presiding over Trump’s various criminal and civil cases spiked after he criticized those judges in speeches and social media posts.
Biden, who has repeatedly condemned political violence, did so again immediately after the attack on Trump.
“There is no room in America for this kind of violence, or any violence. The assassination attempt goes against everything we stand for as a nation and as a country,” Biden said in a televised address. “We will debate and we will have disagreements. That will never change. But we will never lose sight of who we are as Americans.”
Trump had initially struck a defiant tone — he pumped his fist at the crowd and yelled “Fight! Fight!” after a shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania — but on Sunday he called for the nation to come together.
“At this moment it is more important than ever that we come together,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.
That message was reinforced by his campaign memos urging calm to staff. “It is our sincere hope that this horrific act will unite our team, and our nation, and we must renew our commitment to the security and peace of our nation,” one internal campaign memo seen by Reuters said.
Some pro-Trump commentators have predicted more violence to come. “They won’t stop by any means necessary unless America stands up to them,” one commenter on the right-wing video-sharing site Rumble said of Democrats. “There will be violence. Civil war.”
A leader of the Proud Boys, the violent male extremist group whose supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, said the group will attend the Republican National Convention, which begins on Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “You’re going to see us at a lot more events” following the Trump shooting, a Proud Boys official told Reuters. “We’re going to be more active, that’s all.”
Megan McBride, an expert on domestic violent extremism, said U.S. leaders have a short time to defuse partisan hatred before a cycle of retaliation kicks in. McBride, a senior fellow at CNA Public Research, a nonprofit that studies security issues, said research shows support for political violence increases when people believe the other side supports it.
“It’s not inevitable that threats of violence will escalate into violence itself,” she said. “This is a really great opportunity for the country to de-escalate some of the tensions.”
The shooter’s political stance and motive remain unclear. The suspect, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service agent at the scene. Crooks was a Republican and was eligible to vote for the first time in the November 5 presidential election. His father, Matthew Crooks, 53, told CNN he was trying to find out what happened but wouldn’t speak about his son until he had spoken with police.
(Additional reporting by Nathan Lane, Jarrett Renshaw, Aram Roston and Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Sepp)
