The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump left a nation stunned. But the most shocking aspect was that it was not nearly as surprising as it should have been. For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides. That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy, unleash “death squads” and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.”
President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric. In 2022, Biden held his controversial speech before Independence Hall where he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Biden recently referenced the speech and has embraced the claims that this could be our last democratic election.
I discuss this rage rhetoric in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” We are living through an age of rage. It is not our first, but it may be the most dangerous such period in our history.
Some of us have been saying for years that this rage rhetoric is a dangerous political pitch for the nation. While most people reject the hyperbolic claims, others take them as true. They believe that homosexuals are going to be “disappeared” as claimed on ABC’s “The View” or that the Trump “death squads” are now green lighted by a conservative Supreme Court, as claimed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Rage is addictive and contagious. It is also liberating. It allows people a sense of license to take actions that would ordinarily be viewed as repulsive.
As soon as Trump was elected, unhinged rage became the norm as with Kathy Griffin featuring herself holding the bloody severed head of Trump.
Just recently, another celebrity, actress Lea DeLaria, begged Biden to “blow [Trump] up” after the recent presidential immunity decision. DeLaria explained that “this is a **** war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our **** country. And these a**holes are going to take it away. They’re going to take it away.”
For months, people have heard politicians and press call Trump “Hitler” and the GOP a Nazi movement. Some compared stopping Trump to stopping Hitler in 1933. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) declared Trump “is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated.” He later apologized.
Others say that Trump “will destroy the world” unless he is stopped.
I do not believe that the politicians or pundits engaging in what I call “rage rhetoric” want actual violence. But they have knowingly created conditions for extremist views and, yes, extremist actions.
The media has been quick to denounce reckless rhetoric from the right while largely ignoring the same language on the left. That included threats against conservative Supreme Court justices before the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the steps of the Supreme Court and called out Kavanaugh by name: “I want to tell you, (Justice Neil) Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Again, I do not believe that Schumer wanted Nicholas Roske to go to the home of Justice Kavanaugh to kill him. However, these politicians must know that some citizens will hear this rhetoric as a justification for violent conduct.
Thus, when the president is claiming that the election may end democracy in the nation, it can be heard as much as a license as a warning, particularly when he adds “we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
We still do not know about the shooter in this assassination attempt. But we know all too well how unhinged people can find justification in the incendiary rhetoric of our politics. This moment did not occur in a vacuum; it occurred in a time when our leaders long abandoned reason for rage.
We have come full circle to where we began as a Republic. In the 1800 election, Federalists and Jeffersonians engaged in similar rage rhetoric.
Federalists told citizens that, if Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”
Jeffersonians warned that, if Adams were reelected, “chains, dungeons, transportation, and perhaps the gibbet” awaited citizens and they “would instantaneously be put to death.”
Both sides stoked the public’s anger and fears, and violence was seen across the nation.
In our current age of rage, politicians have sought to use the same anger and fear to rally support at any cost.
This is the cost.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).