Trump attacks fuel the rhetoric fire in the US

US politicians and analysts have been concerned regarding increasingly fiery rhetoric since the attack on the US Congress in 2021.

The danger signal was vividly illustrated in 2022, when the husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked with a hammer by a far-right conspiracy theorist. He wanted to hold the Democratic leader hostage and “smash her kneecaps.”

– For several weeks, the leaders of the Democrats have fired up under a ridiculous hysteria that if Donald Trump wins the re-election, it will be the end of democracy in America, writes congressman Steve Scalise, who survived a politically motivated assassination attempt in 2017.

Saturday’s alleged perpetrator, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was registered as a Republican.

– It is clear that we have seen lunatics from the extreme left act on the basis of violent rhetoric in the past. This fiery rhetoric must stop, he writes on X, formerly Twitter.

Trump adviser Chris LaCivita attacked the language of “left-wing activists, Democratic contributors and even Joe Biden.”

Trump’s rhetoric

None of them mentioned that Trump himself has been an active contributor to making America’s political discourse considerably coarser in recent years.

Several of his targets in Congress and the government, from Republican Senator Mitt Romney to retired scientist Anthony Fauci, have had their guard up following threats from Trump’s supporters.

The former US president sparked outrage last year when he suggested the country’s top military leader should be executed and joked regarding the Pelosi attack.

Trump’s calls for violence are nothing new. He suggested that protesters should be chopped up at a rally in 2016, and that those behind looting should be shot during the racial protests in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd.

He has also repeatedly described the lawyers leading the many civil and criminal cases he faces as “monsters”, “disturbed” and “psycho”. And many claim he encouraged the attack on the Capitol in 2021.

Joe Biden has several times called Trump a threat to democracy in the United States.

Tore Wig, professor of political science at the University of Oslo, agrees. If Trump becomes president once more, he believes the threat will be greater than the first time he ruled the country, he recently told NTB.

One of the reasons is that Trump, according to Wig, directs clearer attacks once morest institutions that play crucial roles in the country’s governance. Trump claims both choice and judiciary is manipulated and rigged – without proving the claims.

Attack on democracy

Republicans have previously accused Democrats of overreacting to imagery and ignoring left-wing aggression, such as the harassment of conservative Supreme Court justices and the 2017 shooting that wounded Scalise.

Still, the law enforcement agency says that while threats have spread from every corner, right-wing violence is the biggest concern.

Discourse that was once taboo is now commonplace on the far right, with Republicans in Congress using violent language and imagery.

Threats once morest members of Congress reached a record high of 9,625 in 2021, compared to 3,939 in 2017.

Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has conducted several polls on political violence since the Capitol attack. Last month, 10 percent of respondents said the use of force was justified to prevent Trump from becoming president.

– The shooting of former President Trump is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country, he tells AFP.

Political analyst Charlie Kolean asked Americans to stand together.

– An attack on the presidential candidate is an attack on our democracy, he says.