America’s political violence is a fire that the president keeps stoking
Idea
Updated ,first published
Updated ,first published
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a fixture on the Washington calendar; Perhaps the only night when every corner of the political spectrum comes together to celebrate freedom of expression. At its center is the president’s blush: proof that no citizen, no matter how powerful, is superior to another. Office may command respect, but its occupant can be satirized just like anyone else.
Even if just for one night, it reminds the American political world that the free flow of ideas is more important than any individual’s ego or office.
We live in a bad time for such ideals.
Political violence has increased sharply in the last decade; That’s up from five other periods in U.S. history when a sitting president was shot, leaving four dead and one seriously injured. Donald Trump has been the most important accelerator of this rise, fueling the fire at every opportunity.
Just a few days ago, it was threatening to wipe out an entire civilization from above. In November, he wrote that six politicians who criticized him had committed a crime “punishable by death.”
In 2018, a Trump supporter sent pipe bombs to 16 Democratic politicians and their supporters; Luckily he didn’t kill anyone. That year, I was hosting an event for the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida when law enforcement found the bomber’s van nearby. I had less than a minute to reveal my candidate.
In 2022, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by a man who prosecutors described as a far-right conspiracy theorist who tried to kill the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives. At a fundraiser for California Republicans a year later, Trump mocked both: “We’re going to stand up to the crazy Nancy Pelosi who’s destroying San Francisco; does anyone know how her husband is doing?”
In 2025, Melissa Hortman, the first woman to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Minnesota, was shot and killed in her home by an attacker who found herself in the middle of the dangerous and conspiratorial world that Donald Trump fueled for his own politics.
Although Democrats and liberals were largely the targets of political violence, the fire could not be brought under control. Trump was the target of two assassination attempts while running for re-election in 2024, and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd last September.
We are all now paying the price for Trump’s naive and callous political logic. He immediately believes that his word must be firm on any matter and that he is not responsible for any bad consequences that may arise.
This logic made the Secret Service’s job difficult. Agents are asked to maintain order in an increasingly dangerous political environment for far less pay than the private sector can offer. They are asked to work alongside newly hired ICE agents; investigative standards are being lowered; Some are reportedly linked to neo-Nazi groups or have accusations of domestic violence. And they’re doing all of this through a months-long administrative shutdown that has left parts of the agency without pay and on unpaid leave.
The same agents operate in a country where every attempt to address the epidemic of gun violence clashes with the lobbying power of America’s firearms industry. Trump disbanded the Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House on his first day in office. His administration then moved to restore convicted domestic abusers’ access to guns, which was expressly prohibited by federal law, and reduced the government’s capacity to track and prosecute illegal gun dealers.
We don’t yet know the reason for the attack at the Correspondents’ Dinner. We may not be able to do that for a while, especially given the turmoil surrounding Trump’s Justice Department and embattled FBI Director Kash Patel. What is notable is that neither Trump nor anyone on his team has rushed to identify a political justification; a constraint conspicuously absent from similar events over the past decade.
Predictably, Trump has already turned the attack to his own ends: In his press conference after returning to the White House, it became an argument about why the new ballroom should be built.
We do not know whether the gunman was aimed at the president, the cabinet, or the press, which consisted of thousands of people. In the end it doesn’t matter. Violence against any of them sends the message that getting involved in politics now carries risks.
This is exactly why political violence of all kinds is so abhorrent and must be condemned at every opportunity, regardless of its source, target or precipitator.
The political violence now woven into American daily life has found much of its oxygen from Donald Trump. Perhaps this attack, foiled by the Secret Service and its partners, will serve as a warning.
Fire does not discriminate. When Trump makes violence more normal, more acceptable, he only makes it more likely. This is a fire that makes no distinction between those who light the match and those who try to extinguish it, destroying everything in its path.
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne studying the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy. He previously served in the Biden-Harris administration.
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Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne studying the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy. He previously served three years in the Biden-Harris Administration.
