After the Shooting: Reflections and Responses

Considered Perspectives on Rhetoric and Violence in American Politics

Today’s TL;dr highlights insights from several insightful articles and one podcast following the attempted murder of Donald Trump¹. As someone deeply interested in government and political rhetoric, these stories particularly resonate with me. Instead of focusing on takeaways, I'll be sharing some of the most noteworthy passages from the articles and the podcast. So, expect plenty of pull quotes. Here we go.

If You Love This Country, Turn Down the Temperature Now

Duh, you say. Fair enough, but David Masci’s essay in The Free Press goes deeper than a simple argument that the incident should prompt both political sides to reduce their hostile rhetoric. “Cool things down” is the most popular takeaway I’m seeing in the initial follow-up coverage of Saturday’s events, and, indeed, was the primary point President Biden made in his national address Sunday night. (To his credit, Biden acknowledged his own very recent, inappropriate gun-related word choice in an interview Monday.)

Masci writes:

We may look back at Trump’s Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as the moment when the election was decided. But beyond its possible political impact, the shooting in Butler is an opportunity for both sides to inject some much-needed restraint into their campaign rhetoric and, in doing so, attempt to set a new tone going forward, even beyond Election Day. 

As I write this, the motives of the shooter remain unclear. But even if Thomas Matthew Crooks turns out to be a garden-variety crank with a big chip on his shoulder and no political axe to grind, many if not most Americans will rightly see his actions within the context of the extreme, WWE-style rhetorical brew that the American political scene has been marinating in for roughly the past decade. It is beyond obvious that some on both sides of the political aisle will literally say or do anything to gain an advantage.

But will either side truly give up the no-holds-barred rhetoric? Masci has his doubts.

Call me cynical, but I’m under no illusions that this episode will change either campaign’s willingness to say anything to win. And, needless to say, fellow travelers and cranks on either side will quickly blame the other side entirely for the assassination attempt. But I do hold out a small (frankly, tiny) hope that Saturday’s shooting will remove the incentive for the campaigns to continue behaving irresponsibly. 

All of us (including your humble correspondent) frequently shake our heads and tut-tut the sad state of politics in America today. But as with the state of the culture, our politics is a mirror of our society. To put it another way: we have seen the enemy, and it is us. 

Masci, Pogo and I agree on that last point.

The only way to force the respective political machines to stop the apocalyptic fearmongering is to punish those candidates and parties who keep cranking it out, Masci writes.

The only way the campaigns will use Saturday’s shooting as a teachable moment and dial back the hostile and overblown language is if they think they will pay a political price for continuing with business as usual.

Here’s hoping.

The Problem With Blaming Words for Political Violence

Writing for The Dispatch, professor Paul D. Miller discusses the need to condemn political violence unequivocally while cautioning against blaming speech for inciting such acts. He argues that blaming words for violence risks stifling free speech and highlights the importance of responsible communication.

Miller starts by noting the nation “found a brief moment of unity denouncing political violence,” in the aftermath of the shooting. That’s encouraging, he writes.

(I)t was especially welcome to hear so many Republicans, who spent years downplaying January 6, decide that violence is unacceptable after all. Perhaps this moment will prompt some sober reflection on what it means to be complicit with the growing climate of extremism around us on all sides. 

Let us first state the obvious: Trump’s antidemocratic instincts do not justify violence: Precisely because we value democracy and the rule of law, we must oppose Trump peacefully and through the democratic process.

Miller then gets to his primary point: Civil discourse should be the primary means to address political disagreements.

On the question of blame, many online pundits, and some elected Republicans, immediately blamed the left for calling Trump a threat to democracy. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” J.D. Vance, senator from Ohio and [now the nominee] to be Trump’s vice president, posted, “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” 

Biden didn’t call for violence, but he did say Trump is a threat to democracy. We fought wars against fascists and authoritarians in the past. If Trump is a fascist and an authoritarian, the conclusion seems obvious: We should fight the same way now. By that reasoning, Vance blames Trump’s critics for the attempt on his life.

If Biden’s words are to blame for the assassination attempt, then I welcome Vance’s recognition that Donald Trump is to blame for January 6 after all. Trump didn’t call for violence, but he did tell his followers that democracy was on the line. 

You can see the clear problem, I hope. Blaming words for the violence that follows sets a bad precedent. This would become an all-encompassing tool of censorship. If any criticism is the moral equivalent of incitement, we have no free speech. We’re obligated to self-censor; we sacrifice speech to eliminate even the smallest possibility that violence might follow from the extremists and the unstable among us. 

Of course, criticism is allowed, and the assassination attempt on Trump does not inoculate him against criticism … We shouldn’t let the threat of terrorist violence have a heckler’s veto over our speech.

Miller correctly notes our propensity for shallow hot takes and the power of social media algorithms to spread them quickly them are unhealthy for our democracy. Yes, you have the freedom to make incendiary statements. That doesn’t mean you should.

But free speech comes with responsibility; it gives us legal license to say pretty much anything, but no moral license to exaggerate, defame, lie, or ignore the context in which we speak. There is a line we should not cross—even if the First Amendment gives us the right to—out of respect for decency, truth, and democracy. And if you’re going to say potentially inflammatory things, be extra careful in how and where you say them.

If, for example, you’re going to call Trump a fascist (as I have), then at least write a 3,000-word essay carefully examining the historical analogy to see just how far it goes (conclusion: only so far). An accusation that serious doesn’t belong on unserious social media platforms. Calling Trump a threat to democracy is fair game—if you have the receipts and are prepared to make the argument. 

By contrast, consider Trump after the 2020 election. Whether or not Trump met the legal threshold of incitement (likely not) he sailed past the threshold of moral culpability for the riot. His monthslong campaign of deceit, manipulation, conspiracies, frivolous lawsuits, and demagoguery had no basis in evidence or argument; he had no receipts. Trump’s claims about the 2020 election were patently false, and they were known to be false at the time. And yet, Trump made them anyway with the clear intent of using the falsehoods to pressure Congress and the mob into extra-constitutional action. Trump’s speech, while legal, was patently irresponsible and willfully inflammatory. 

The Assassination Attempt: How to cover political violence

More from The Dispatch — if you’re not familiar with it, here’s its founding manifesto — which put out a podcast Monday morning that looked at the media coverage and politics during the 36 hours since the shooting.

The discussion turned to the kinds of issues Miller touched on. Senior editor Sarah Isgur — an attorney who once served as a Department of Justice spokesperson — asked what I believe is the pertinent question for those of us who care about free speech and worry about censorship. Said Sarah:

How are we supposed to judge the difference between responsible criticism of Donald Trump the candidate heading into an election versus irresponsible catastrophizing that could lead to political violence …?

This is what we must wrestle with in our democracy, and it’ll be interesting to see how this question is answered over the next three-and-a-half months until Election Day.

Later in the podcast, editor-in-chief and political columnist Jonah Goldberg made a compelling point about the calls for "unity." (Goldberg mentioned many of these ideas are also explored in Yuval Levin’s new book, American Covenant. We'll conclude with additional thoughts from Levin below.)

Our system is not set up for unity. It is not set up for people to all agree on pretty much anything except the basic rules. Democracy is about disagreement, not about agreement. Our system of government is about competition, checks and balances, faction against faction, separation of powers, divided government, federalism horizontally and vertically, competitive elections. What we need in this country is less hectoring about unity ... what you need is a better way of disagreeing. We need to be better at disagreeing with each other, not try to impose agreement ... The time for argument in a democracy is never over. Because that’s what democracy is about. It’s about constant argument, where you’re constantly gut-checking the will of the people in constant election after election. But we keep beating people up saying, “We’re one more election away from no elections. We’re one more election away from the end of America. If the other side gets in power, that’s the end.” And that gives you the permission structure to stop finding ways to disagree honorably, peaceably, responsibly, maturely, and instead says victory is everything. That’s the kind of rhetoric ... that can lead to violence.

The Partisan Trap

Back to more coverage in The Free Press (the #1 publication on Substack by revenue, with 630k+ total subscribers and 25 full-time staffers). On July 15, writer Peter Savodnik reported that 90 minutes after the shooting, Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic strategist, suggested the near-assassination of Donald Trump might have been staged to garner sympathy and political advantage.

I saw similar takes on X/Twitter and was stunned by the stupidity of the suggestion. I shouldn’t have been, Savodnik writes.

By this late date, there’s nothing especially surprising about a partisan, on either side, floating nutty conspiracy theories. Recall that two years ago, Republican influencers like Donald Trump Jr. and Dinesh D’Souza pushed the totally uncorroborated theory that the intruder who attacked Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was his gay lover.

We have come to expect those engaged in electoral battles to say and tweet and post the most absurd, offensive blather. Their job is not to seek out the truth, but to fight relentlessly—blindly. 

The problem, of course, is that they forget that the rest of us—the vast majority of us—are not partisans, that we are capable of something more generous and ecumenical. That we are able to disagree passionately with our fellow Americans about the border or the climate or TikTok or whatever and still, somehow, not fall for the most insidious lies about them. That we can make basic moral distinctions. For example, Trump is not Vladimir Putin. Nor is he Adolf Hitler. He’s just the presumptive Republican nominee. 

Savodnik acknowledges there are “millions of Americans” who fear Trump will trash the Constitution, just as there are “millions of Americans” who believe Biden is the one endangering our democracy with “his lies about his mental acuity.”

So be it. But we need not succumb to the partisan trap. The partisan stupidity. Because that is exactly what this is. A myopia and mindlessness so blinding that it conjures up scenarios that go beyond the fiercest partisanship into the realm of insanity. That’s what happens when one views one’s political foe not as a human being with human failings, but as Satan himself. Donald Trump, his innumerable foibles notwithstanding, is not Satan.

The Assassination Attempt—and America’s Choice

As promised, we wrap up with sagacious commentary from Levin, constitutional scholar, former presidential adviser and political analyst, published in Tuesday’s edition of The Free Press. Levin notes that while political violence has been escalating, this incident feels like a significant break from the norm due to its high profile. He views the murder attempt as a stark reminder of the dangers beyond constitutional democracy. He emphasizes the bullets fired symbolize the alternative to constitutional democracy — anarchy and violence. Levin argues our political system, despite its flaws, enables intense but constructive disagreement, and underscores the need to reaffirm and reinforce the boundaries of our politics.

How can the people who spent years calling Donald Trump a fascist and a mortal threat to democracy now suddenly distance themselves from a young man who apparently took their accusations seriously and did something about them? How can the people who denied the verdicts of elections and cheered on Trump’s promises to jail his political opponents be surprised when their rhetoric of war is answered with gunfire?

But this would be the wrong reaction. That we feel repulsed by the alternative to our constitutional democracy, having seen it up close, is a very good sign. In this sense, hypocrisy plays an important part in the moral formation of us fallen creatures. Pretending to be a better person than you are is a pretty good way to become a better person than you are. So let’s allow each other the space to do that.

We need to allow political leaders to recalibrate their rhetoric, return to sanity and debate bread and butter governance issues productively. We can still disagree — strongly, passionately — but within the parameters of the constitutional framework that has served America so well, albeit imperfectly, since our founding. We need to understand that it’s OK if “our side” doesn’t get everything it wants, Levin writes.

Taking the Trump assassination attempt seriously does not mean censoring ourselves so we don’t argue with each other or criticize politicians we think are unfit to lead. We do need to do that.

Rather, it should reaffirm both the necessity of the boundaries of our politics, and the necessity of the politics that happens within those boundaries. We need to refocus our political debates on tractable public problems. And we need to lower the temperature of those debates by revitalizing the institutions that keep their stakes relatively low—making sure that no person or institution has all the power, no majority gets everything it wants, and no election is the final one. 

Political violence is not the inevitable conclusion of the path we have traveled in our politics. It is a choice we risk making, and which we must now rise to reject by recognizing the options before us. 

Onward and Upward.

1. I hesitate to call it an assassination attempt because as of now the shooter’s motives are unknown. At this point, he seems to have the kind of profile we’re (unfortunately) accustomed to seeing of a school shooter: a loner, sometimes bullied, with easy access to a rifle. Which takes away none of the horror of his actions, particularly for the family of Corey Comperatore, who was killed at the Pennsylvania rally.