MAGA political violence claims more victims
Trump’s movement relies on terror.
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Early Saturday morning, Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were shot and gravely wounded at their residence in the Minneapolis suburbs. The same gunman then traveled a short distance in an SUV that looked like a police car and murdered former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home. (A note from Aaron: I interviewed Hortman for a 2023 edition of my podcast.)
The shootings were politically motivated. The police found a list of other targets, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, House Rep. Ilhan Omar, Sen. Tina Smith, and abortion rights supporters. The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter, is a security worker, pastor, and “strong” Trump supporter.
(As this newsletter was being finalized late Sunday evening, news broke that Boelter was apprehended by authorities about an hour southwest of Minneapolis.)
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the shooter and his motivations. It does seem clear, though, that this was an assassination targeted at Democrats. As such, it fits into a pattern of right-wing political violence which has been a signature of the Trump era.
Trump himself has encouraged and defended violence directed at his political opponents. These threats (and more than threats) have helped to cow and silence opponents and critics.
Political violence, though, also creates backlash. And there are numerous signs that the association of MAGA with physical assaults on its opponents rallies resistance to Trump. The assassination of Hortman was an evil act. Many people realize that and are determined not to allow this kind of violence to continue as part of our politics.
Trump encourages violence
In his decade-long political career, Donald Trump has repeatedly encouraged or defended violent attacks on Democrats and political critics. As just a few examples:
— In 2015, during Trump’s first primary campaign, white attendees at one of his campaign rallies tackled and beat a Black protestor. Trump approved of the attack, telling Fox News, “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
— In 2018, Trump praised then-US Rep. Greg Gianforte for physically attacking a reporter who asked him questions on the trail. “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!" Trump joked at a rally.
— In 2021, Trump encouraged an insurrection, in which an angry mob stormed the Capitol and threatened the lives and safeties of senators and House members. Seven people, including police and Trump supporters, are believed to have lost their lives as a result of the assault.
During the violence, some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” referring to Trump’s then-vice president who had certified his election loss. Trump privately expressed support for the idea of murdering Pence. He also, in his second term, pardoned all rioters and insurrectionists, making it clear that he saw their actions as justified and virtuous.
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— In 2022, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was viciously beaten with a hammer in their San Francisco home. The attacker was motivated by right-wing Qanon conspiracy theories. Rather than condemning the attack, Trump pushed conspiracy theories blaming Paul Pelosi, then joked about the violence.
—Just last week, California Sen. Alex Padilla attempted to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference. Security staff attacked Padilla, dragged him out of the news conference, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him before finally releasing him.
Trump’s White House falsely claimed that Padilla “lunged” towards Noem and said he engaged in an “immature, theater-kid stunt.” Neither Noem or Trump apologized, making it clear that they felt that the violent, unprovoked assault on a senator trying to do his job of oversight was fine.
And as the manhunt for Boelter was ongoing on Sunday evening, Trump posted an incendiary screed on Truth Social, lying that Democrats “are sick of mind, hate our country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities … There is something wrong with them.”
Needless to say, this is the exact sort of rhetoric that radicalizes people like Boelter and inspires them to commit acts of violence. But instead of responding to the Hortman assassination by turning down the heat, Trump keeps ramping it up.
MAGA follows Trump
Trump has made clear over and over that he approves of violence done in his name, and that he believes that his enemies — whether protestors, Democratic leaders, or his own vice president — deserve to be physically harmed. That creates a permission structure in which MAGA supporters may feel that they can aid the cause, or advance Trump’s agenda, through threats and violence.
In 2018, for example, an obsessive Trump supporter mailed inoperative pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and Trump critics, including former President Barack Obama and actor Robert DeNiro. The next year, Trump published a tweet falsely and irresponsibly suggesting that Rep. Omar, one of the few Muslims in Congress, supported the September 11 attacks. Omar reported that the tweet prompted a massive spike in death threats targeting her, many specifically referencing Trump’s false accusations. Then, in 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was the target of a kidnapping plot by far-right extremists. Whitmer blamed Trump’s rhetoric for inciting his supporters against the covid public health measures she implemented.
Does Trump want to promote violence in his name? Does he really want his supporters to physically assault or kill his opponents? Sometimes the answer seems to be yes, as when he encourages his rally goers to rough up demonstrators. In other instances, Trump will distance himself from violence with boilerplate condemnations — as in the case of the shootings in Minnesota last weekend, which Trump condemned as “horrific.”
This vacillation between embracing violence and paying lip service to repudiating it creates ambiguity and impunity. Trump winks to his more thuggish supporters while publicly insisting that he shouldn’t be held to account for their actions. The game is to get the benefit of intimidation and violence without the responsibility.
And Trump does benefit from his threats, according to those who have been targeted by them. Former Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s most consistent GOP critics, said in his 2023 biography that Trump’s threats of violence kept Republican opponents in line. Specifically, he said that at least one Republican senator would not vote to convict Trump after his impeachment for January 6 because the senator “feared for his family’s safety.”
Other Republican senators have also admitted that they are afraid to cross Trump because of the threat of physical, as well as political, retaliation. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis has noted that he receives death threats from Trump supporters regularly. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, said succinctly earlier this year, “We are all afraid.”
Violence makes MAGA vulnerable
Death threats and stochastic violence can intimidate opponents. It can make people unwilling to speak or vote against your agenda. At worst, it can actually physically silence critics. Padilla was unable to speak at Noem’s press conference. Hortman, nightmarishly, will never speak again.
But there are major downsides to using violence. The ugly, terrifying insurrection was extremely unpopular; after January 6, Trump’s approval rating cratered, dropping to 34 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Corporations scrambled to distance themselves from the GOP, claiming they would no longer give money to those who supported using force to end the constitutional order. Over time, many of those corporations went crawling back to Trump. But the point remains that open displays of political violence can badly delegitimize MAGA, at least in the short term.
Political violence can also elevate its targets. Padilla was not a household name before he attempted to speak at Noem’s press conference. But now that there is video of him being assaulted by federal goons, he’s everywhere in the media, forcefully making the case against Trump.
MAGA assumes that everyone can be bullied and intimidated, but they don’t understand that people hate bullies, and rally to those who are willing to fight them.
The fact that MAGA has made violence part of its political brand is also inseparable from the passionate resistance to Trumpism. This weekend Trump orchestrated a military birthday celebration/parade, cosplaying as a generalissimo by ordering tanks to roll through the streets of the capital.
Hardly anyone turned out to watch. But somewhere between four and six million people took to the streets nationwide for No Kings protests, repudiating Trump’s tanks, his violence, and his authoritarianism. Almost two percent of the US population is angry enough at MAGA’s assault on the Constitution, and at its embrace of political violence, that they defied the right’s open intimidation and explicit death threats aimed at protestors.
Resistance and protest can’t bring Hortman back, and the No Kings demonstrations won’t end MAGA political violence. But the fact that so many refuse to bend the knee is a vital rebuke to those who think that they can end our democracy with terror.
That’s it for today
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One would think that there is enough violence in the world and we shouldn't have it here, especially condoned by our the man in the presidency. The absurd part of this is that it is done in the name of Christianity.
Trump’s Grande Parade! What a bore. Trump saluting. Mr. Bone Spurs, really? A draft dodger saluting. It always makes my heart go to thumping as I puke. Empty bleachers. How embarrassing. Melania falling asleep. Donald morose. Now, can we have something for which to vote? https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/a-just-movement?r=3m1bs