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.
President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have continued casting the event as proof that political violence is the domain of the left — much more so than the right.
“When you look at the problems, the problem is on the left,” the president told reporters Sunday. “It’s not on the right.”
“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,” Vice President JD Vance said Monday while guest hosting Kirk’s podcast.
It’s valid to look for potential politics in the killer’s motivations. And there are pieces of evidence that link suspect Tyler Robinson to the left, even as the fuller picture is still being pieced together and remains opaque.
But Trump and his allies are cherry-picking evidence and misleading about recent violent episodes. They’re also casting stones from a glass house when it comes to the potential role of political rhetoric in such tragedies.
In fact, Trump has spent the last decade saying conspicuously violent things and often flirting with the prospect of justified violence by his supporters – including as recently as Friday.
The caskets of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman are processed down the aisle at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 28. – Jeff Wheeler/Pool/Reuters
The recent history of violent political episodes
The first thing to note is that Democratic figures have also been targeted by violence and the right wing has also risen in violence.
In June, two Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers were shot, one of whom died. In April, there was an arson attempt at the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, another Democrat. And in December 2022 and January 2023, a former Republican candidate paid people to shoot up the homes of Democratic officials in New Mexico. Also in 2022, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was the victim of a brutal hammer attack by a man who said he’d been looking for the then-speaker. There was also the plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
And perhaps most notably, some Trump supporters rose up in violence to try and overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.
All these incidents happened in the last five years.
In many of these cases – especially the Minnesota shootings, Paul Pelosi’s attack and January 6 – prominent Republicans quickly sought to suggest it was actually Trump’s opponents who were responsible. Those claims regularly proved overzealous. The motivations of the perpetrators have often been murky, as they often are in tragedies like these.
In a sign the president may not have taken a full accounting of recent politically motivated violence, Trump was asked Monday about the assassination three months ago of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, and he initially indicated he was “not familiar” with it. When asked why he didn’t order flags lowered to half-staff as he had for Kirk, he replied that he would have if state Gov. Tim Walz had asked him to.
Pro-Trump protesters clash with police during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. – Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Even when it comes to the most high-profile act of political violence in recent years – last July’s assassination attempt against Trump – he and his allies have gone well beyond the evidence in claiming the left was responsible.
The motivations of Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, remain shrouded in mystery. He was a registered Republican, for instance.
The point isn’t necessarily about which side is more violent than the other. It’s that the picture has been much more complicated than Trump’s framing.
Even in his video message after Kirk’s assassination last week, Trump cited his own assassination attempt as an example of “radical left political violence.” That’s simply not proven.
Trump in the same video message also cited instances in which the right was targeted or he said the left was responsible, while ignoring the other examples above.
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 cavalier about 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.
A San Francisco police officer stands guard in front of the home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on October 28, 2022, after her husband Paul Pelosi was attacked by an intruder. – Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
“How’s [Nancy Pelosi’s] husband doing, anybody know?” Trump said at one point. “And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house — which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
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.”
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.
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.
And, of course, Trump has pardoned hundreds of people who engaged in political violence on his behalf on January 6, including those who assaulted police.
Trump’s allusions to violence were of such a concern during the 2016 campaign that many Republicans called him out for it. Among those suggesting he could be inciting violence were Marco Rubio – who’s now his secretary of state – Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley and Rick Perry.
And after January 6, some Republicans indicated Trump was culpable for that violent uprising – with a historic seven GOP senators rebuking him in his impeachment trial.
But Trump now seems to have drawn a very fine line – one that isn’t so much between violence and nonviolence, but between what he casts as evil violence and righteous violence.
He drove that home Friday during an interview on Fox News.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” he said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. … They’re saying we don’t want these people coming in.”
Trump added: “The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious. And they’re horrible. And they’re politically savvy.”
The president seemed to be saying that extremists on the right had legitimate motivations, unlike those on the left.
But Cox has warned about just that. “That’s the problem with political violence, is it metastasizes,” he said. “Because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point, we have to find an off ramp or it’s going to get much, much worse.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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