The NPR Politics Podcast - A Conversation About Political Violence In The United States

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Former president Donald Trump appears to have been the target of a second assassination effort Sunday. A man was arrested after the Secret Service spotted him with a gun on the golf course where Trump was playing. What do experts make of this moment of political violence, what is driving it and what can be done to address it?This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's 2.06 p.m. on Monday, September 16th. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on the show, a conversation about political violence. By now, you all know, a man was spotted holding a rifle in the bushes close to former President Trump who was golfing at his Florida resort yesterday. And that man was arrested and is now facing federal weapons charges. Law enforcement officials are describing it as an apparent assassination attempt, and they are continuing to investigate. Now, this all follows the previous assassination attempt against Trump, which took place in Pennsylvania in July when a shooter fired several rounds at an outdoor rally.

A lot to start with. But, Odette, you know, it's kind of hard to put a timestamp of sorts on all of these instances of violence because political violence is not new in this country. And, you know, I wonder from all the experts you've been talking to, does this era feel like a newer range of politically violent events or is this happening at all on an escalated level? Well, I think we have to be clear to start. You know, we still don't know what the motives were for this apparent attempted assassination or the attempted assassination that happened back in July. But yes, the experts I speak with who monitor terrorism and political violence say we are in new waters here, particularly with this election. You know, there's a number of factors, you know, and a key one is that the election has been framed as an existential moment, you know, for both sides, you know, for the left, there's this thought that if Trump wins, democracy dies. For the right, it's that if Trump doesn't win, you know, the nation is

lost. So, you know, the stakes are being really framed as very high. But, you know, the other part of this, Deepa, is that we have to remember that the environment is not just, you know, these kind of high profile events. What we're seeing today is that political violence and threats of political violence are now percolating into just everyday life in America in a way that's really new. You know, we're seeing everyone from judges and members of Congress receiving these threats, all the way down to local librarians and teachers, you know, all of them have become targets as the, you know, the nation's sort of political discourse has focused on the so called culture wars issues. And the data bear this out. You know, last week, the Bridging Divides

Initiative at Princeton University released its latest quarterly survey results, and they're measuring threats against local officials. What they found is that so far 2024 is on pace to exceed 2023 for how many threats and harassment incidents were reported. Does that mean that people are being targeted for their political beliefs or, you know, political paraphernalia they're wearing? How does that kind of shake out? It's from the very position that they occupy. Sometimes it's because, you know, they were the target in a local, you know, disinformation campaign. So it really is kind of out of their control in many cases. A lot of these people are doing their jobs, you know,

thinking that they're completely apolitical in the execution of their jobs. But then because of the way that the culture wars have sort of just suffused every aspect of our lives here, like they are sort of accidentally becoming the targets of some of these campaigns. We've seen people like leave their jobs because they just can't handle it. I mean, this adds a whole other level of stress for them and their families that they just didn't sign up for. I want to talk a little bit about the information environment that exists right now, too. I mean, there have been targeted attacks against Trump, but he's also helped boost a lot of these conspiracy theories himself, right?

Most recently, he and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have been talking about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating people's pets. There is literally no evidence of that. But it, of course, has kind of seemed to lead to this threat of violence in the town of Springfield, certainly members of the Haitian community feeling really unsafe. And Domenico, it sort of feels like we're in this constant cycle of misinformation and lies, which can potentially lead to more violence and then misinformation coming out of that. How are you kind of squaring all of this?

And there have been other instances of people being threatened. Judges who've talked about after the 2020 election being very nervous about the sort of threats that they see from the right. People nervous about speaking out because they don't want to be attacked online and potentially having to have security at their homes. This is a really explosive kind of time. You know, Trump, again, today saying that he blames Biden and Harris for rhetoric about him being a threat to democracy. So there's a lot of finger pointing, but not really any sort of off ramp to seeing, you know, any end to this kind

of thing. And I think a lot of people are very concerned about what happens after election day. Deepa, you mentioned specifically the baseless, you know, claim about immigrants in Springfield. You know, I think that this is a really just notable example of how sometimes these misinfo campaigns play out. The origin of that narrative came from a neo-Nazi group, you know, that had been going to Springfield to sow division. And like the fact that that actually worked its way into the remarks of a presidential candidate in a nationally televised debate is just really shocking and very telling about the moment that we're in. Right. It sort of gives this impression, and it has always been the case with Donald Trump,

that anything could be on the table. He could say something and that truth and untruth, the misinformation and disinformation that is constantly spreading has extremely, extremely real consequences. And Domenico, to your point, I mean, it doesn't really feel like there's an off ramp here, especially in the context of this moment, because we're just weeks to go before the 2024 election ends. Is there a way to kind of, you know, as Joe Biden has said multiple times now, to sort of cool down the rhetoric, at least coming from people running for president? Well, we've heard from Harris and from Biden, essentially saying that violence is never the answer, that what's really important here is going and voting. If you want to win in this democracy, if you want to be able to get what you

want out of it, it really has to be politics as the path. But so many people have been so jaded and cynical about politics, that it makes it a lot harder to kind of believe that that's the way to go. But that's what you're hearing from Biden and Harris, that this kind of violence is certainly not the answer. At the same time, you know, when Joe Biden was asked about when Trump was shot at in July in Pennsylvania, you know, he was asked about his quote unquote rhetoric. He said, well, Trump is a threat to democracy. It's not that we should go and do something physically violent, but you should win at the polls. And that's something that I think is a message that they're trying to have break through for most people, because you do have to run a campaign. There's a moment that extremism experts often point to as sort of an example of

how it could be done better, which is in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, you know, there was an immediate spike in violence against Arabs and Muslims in this country. But then President Bush gave a national address where he said that our enemy is not our Muslim neighbors, you know, and that they are Americans just like us. And the number of attacks went down. And so, you know, many experts that I've spoken to have pointed to that as an example of what leaders should be doing, especially leaders whose audiences listen to them. And so, you know, if we were to hear Trump himself, you know, condemn threats against immigrants or attacks against immigrants, you know, that could be sort of a similar outcome.

But it needs to be sustained. I mean, right now, we're seeing just political violence has been so normalized. You know, this needs to be sort of a complete shift in the tone of the sort of political direction that we have right now in the country. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. And, you know, Adet, I want to talk about another factor in this conversation about political violence, which is pretty critical here. And that is how easy it is to obtain a firearm in this country. In your reporting, how much does that factor into what we can call a rise in political violence in the U.S.? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's absolutely a big factor in it. You know, I was speaking with a counterterrorism expert earlier today who said, you know, the country is just, quote, awash in weapons. And when you pair that with conspiracy theories that, you know, people may be susceptible to and this note of urgency to act, right? This urgency around,

you know, the nation being lost or democracy being lost. You know, that's really a dangerous cocktail. And Domenico, I mean, the threat of gun violence anywhere in the United States is like very present in our lives and definitely a top political concern for a lot of young people and parents of young people. But I want to kind of get at, you know, how that sort of impacts, you know, folks who are running for office, of course, but also all the way down to people who are just spending their time volunteering, right, or folks who are, you know, getting engaged in this election, which is, I think you could objectively argue a healthy thing for our democracy. And when violence is getting in the way of that, I mean, I think you could objectively argue, a healthy thing for our democracy. And when

violence is getting in the way of that, I mean, how does that impact the way people are engaging in our election process and also just in participating in all of this in general? It's hugely problematic just from a, you know, societal standpoint, whether or not people can actually have intellectual debates at all about, at all about shared sets of facts and policy perspectives because those things are normal in a democracy to be able to have arguments, have disagreements, but not go and get your gun. I think the thing that's been the most scary has been looking at just how strong partisan bias is that's affecting almost every decision that people seem to make, especially about politics. We've seen it in our polling. You could ask almost anything. If it attaches Trump to the name, you're going to wind up with almost exactly the same breakdown as you do for whether or not they want Trump to be the president. And it's just more polarized than it ever has been. And it's particularly true and pronounced and acute on the right.

I don't feel like that necessarily helps us understand how we get to a point where these two apparent attempted assassination attempts against Donald Trump, like, could, you know, to a point where those would not have happened. Because again, we don't know the clear motives behind those events. And to say that it was because of how polarized we are right now, we just don't know that. And so there is, I think, a lot more work that we have to be talking about as well when it comes to, you know, tamping down conspiracy theories to regulating the online spaces that glorify shooting high profile figures or mass shootings. You know, this is not just a problem of polarization, but it's a problem that extends to sort of a number of subcultures that exist primarily online that are also driving

people to act violently in our society. Domenico, I mean, this is the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump just in the last two months here. We have a couple weeks to go until this election is over. And I'm curious, what are you looking out for observing as this election comes to a close? Any changes in rhetoric or the way these campaigns function and move forward, handle security? What are you looking out for? Well, a couple of things. I think in the short run, I'm looking for just how much do Republicans turn up the heat on this when, you know, we've been talking about trying to bring the heat down, but trying to blame as we saw after

the first assassination attempt in July, trying to blame Democrats for their rhetoric, rather than sort of looking at the big picture or trying to make a show of unity, for example. I'm also interested in seeing how motivated voters will be by any of this. Does it resonate or do we sort of still stay where we basically have been, which is the most likely outcome that we're still going to be very close with very strong feelings on either side, particularly about Trump. And I do wonder about Election Day and beyond and those poll workers who are more under threat than they've ever been before and how they do their jobs, the vote counting, the judges who are going to be hearing the cases about these things, and, you know, how smoothly things go for inauguration. So there's a lot to watch, certainly, in the coming weeks and months. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tifa Shibaram. I cover the White House.

I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.