Robert A. Pape, a political scientist who studies political violence, has little doubt that former President Trump has made more incendiary comments than Vice President Kamala Harris.
The problem, however, is what his research tells him: Both sides of the political spectrum have radical elements that see violence as justified if it means stopping Trump from gaining power (10% of adults) or making sure Trump returns to the White House (7%).
Together, they account for millions of people, he estimates. And more of them on both sides have been incited by rhetoric to act in recent years, whether it’s the two apparent assassination attempts on Trump, the hammer attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, that sent him to the hospital, or any number of events that have lasted only a day in the headlines.
“We don’t have a meter that tells you three incendiary statements are OK but 10 is what triggers support for violence,” said Pape, a University of Chicago professor who conducts studies every few months on people’s attitudes toward political violence. “Doing counts of how many times does Trump say something outrageous versus how many times the Democrats say something outrageous is actually meaningless.”
That dynamic has created a frustrating dilemma for Democrats and other Trump critics who see his attacks on Democrats’ rhetoric as hypocritical and believe their own statements — that Trump is an existential threat to democracy — are accurate and necessary. Furthermore, the motives of violent actors are often unclear, given the mental health issues that often accompany such attacks.
Trump has stoked violence since he entered public life and has promised during this campaign that he would pardon members of the violent mob he revved up before they entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, many assaulting police officers and chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” hoping to help Trump overturn the results of the election. He repeated a false claim last week about legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s household pets, increasing tensions that have led to dozens of bomb threats levied against local schools.
Trump’s social media post this week accusing Harris of taking “politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust” was couched in incendiary language, referring to his opponent as “Comrade Kamala Harris,” repeating claims that she uses “Communist Left Rhetoric” and accusing her of allowing millions of migrants — whom he labels criminals, terrorists and mentally ill — to “INVADE and take over our Country.”
By the time his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, echoed similar complaints in a speech Monday, many of their opponents were aghast, accusing the duo of “gaslighting” the public.
“Donald Trump regularly threatens our democracy, praises dictators, and applauds himself for rolling back freedoms like abortion access,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a Burbank Democrat and Senate candidate who led the first impeachment trial against Trump, said in response to a question from The Times. “He also incited the most violent attack on our Capitol in history. There is nothing inconsistent about defending our democracy and deploring the use of political violence — indeed they go hand in hand.”
Most of the Trump campaign’s specific complaints about Democrats involve Harris and others calling the former president a threat to democracy, which it says provokes a potentially violent response by raising the stakes of the election to existential terms.
Harris criticized Trump on Tuesday for spreading lies that have endangered students in Springfield, and other rhetoric that has demonized minorities, during an interview with the National Assn. of Black Journalists in Philadelphia.
“You cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country, is designed to have people pointing fingers at each other,” she said.
Polls show overwhelming majorities of voters fear political violence if their own candidate wins in November and the other side refuses to accept the result, including 83% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans, according to an August Deseret News/HarrisX survey. Nearly 80% of voters regardless of party fear violence before the election.
President Biden said before he dropped out of his reelection campaign that he was running because Trump is an existential threat to democracy. But after the second apparent attempt to target Trump on Sunday, he struck a more unifying tone, calling Trump in a conversation that both men described as cordial and making public statements reinforcing that “in America, there is no place for political violence.” Harris said she called Trump to check on him Tuesday, echoing Biden’s language that a healthy democracy requires resolving differences peacefully.
But the lines Republicans are drawing for Democrats is confounding at times because they include criticizing Democrats for quoting Trump’s own words. Scott Jennings, a Trump supporter who regularly appears on CNN, went after Harris on Monday.
“I mean, she repeats it herself. ‘Trump will be a dictator on Day 1,’” Jennings said. “I mean, this country fights dictators.”
The problem? Trump, who has repeatedly threatened retribution against political opponents if elected, was asked in a December interview in Iowa by Fox News host Sean Hannity whether he would abuse his power if he goes back to the White House.
“Except for Day One…,” Trump said. “We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”
Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary to President George W. Bush, made a similar critique in an L.A. Times interview Tuesday, calling out Harris for repeating Trump’s 2022 plea for “termination” of parts of the Constitution to put him back in office. Fleischer did not appear to realize Harris was quoting Trump when she made those remarks. But when pressed, he said Harris needed to use more context to avoid raising tensions.
Fleischer keeps a file of heated American political rhetoric dating to the Founding Fathers. He recalled his own boss being called a war criminal. “American [political] language has always been rough, tough and excessive,” he said. “But after two assassination attempts, stop the talk about the threat to democracy. The threat to democracy are the two assassins.”
