Calling Trump a Tyrant Is Not a Call to Violence

Sign up for Inside the Trump Presidency, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump term. To describe Donald Trump as a corrupt aspiring authoritarian is not to conclude that he should be murdered. This ought to be a simple point to understand. Yet it is lost on a large swath of the American right, who insist that calling Trump what he is causes at least some of his opponents—among them, the accused shooter Cole Tomas Allen—to believe that violence is justified against the president. In an interview with CBS following the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Trump blamed the most recent attempt on his life on “the hate speech of the Democrats,” which he called “very dangerous.” The New York Post asked on Sunday, “Where did Allen get such ideas about Trump and the need to remove him, via murder?” It answered the question like so: “Almost certainly from the left, including from Democrats in positions of power. Barely a day goes by without some Dem calling Trump an autocrat, a king, a dictator, Hitler.” Also on Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Representative Jamie Raskin to engage with the premise. “You and many of your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president,” she said. “Do you think twice about that when something like this happens?” And yesterday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt charged, “Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence.” This claim suffers three serious defects. First, it assumes that violence is the only logical response to an attempt to undermine democracy. In reality, Trump’s assault on democratic norms can be—and in fact, is being—successfully resisted through democratic means. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán had carried out a more advanced version of the same power-consolidation strategy that Trump is attempting now, and voters defeated him through peaceful organizing. [From the September 2024 issue: American fury] The second problem with a moratorium on calling your opponents authoritarian is that Trump himself routinely violates it. The president has spent a decade calling his rivals communists and traitors, among other hyperbolic insults. He has specifically claimed that Democrats rig elections as a matter of course. Taking violent steps to stop undemocratic political leaders follows much more closely from Trump’s rhetoric than from anything Democrats have said about him. And third, the conservative principle would seem to rule out any criticism of authoritarian tendencies, however real they may be. If calling a politician an aspiring authoritarian is tantamount to inciting their murder, then doing so is irresponsible even if the charge is true. Republicans could nominate the reanimated corpse of Benito Mussolini for president, and Democrats couldn’t question his commitment to democracy without being accused of ginning up violence. Ideally, critics of Trump’s threat to democracy would recognize that authoritarianism is on a dimmer switch, not an on-off switch, and that his opponents have ample space to oppose him through democratic channels. They would likewise acknowledge that even most dictators fall far short of the horrors of Hitlerism. That distinction is widely, if not universally, understood, which is why the rallies are called “No Kings,” not “No Führers.” The ruling as out of bounds any discussion of Trump’s contempt for democracy is not merely some unfortunate by-product of the right’s rhetorical gambit, but its central purpose. Trump has been glorifying and stoking violence since he entered politics. He has urged his rally-goers to “kick the crap out of” counterprotesters; has fantasized about unleashing the brute strength of his supporters (“I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad”); and, of course, mass-pardoned the insurrectionists who did precisely that on January 6, 2021. It is true that, in addition to fomenting violence, Trump has been the target of it. Conservatives appear to be correct to attribute an ideological motive to the recent shooting attempt. The most chilling aspect of Allen’s radicalization, judging from the information available so far, is that it did not spring from either a mental breakdown or some anarchist sectarian plot, but instead relatively banal Democratic partisanship. Allen seems to have posted on Bluesky and attended a No Kings rally. Some progressives have cheered Luigi Mangione for murdering Brian Thompson, a health-care CEO. The prominence of Hasan Piker, an apologist for terrorism and a proponent of authoritarian regimes, has revealed a much broader comfort on the left with illiberal ideas and violent methods. Resorting to violence merely strengthens the forces of illiberalism and sense of disorder upon which Trumpism feeds. The official Democratic Party has understood this, which is why not a single elected Democrat at any level has condoned murder attempts on the president or his allies. Allen apparently believes that if you conclude that Trump is an authoritarian, then violence against him is justified. By conflating antiauthoritarian arguments with incitement, conservatives are making the same error but following it to the opposite conclusion. The norm that many Trump-supporting conservatives seek to enforce is not a prohibition on violent rhetoric or even limits on attacking politicians who are seen as threats to democracy, but a one-sided ban imposed on Trump’s critics so that the president can do as he wishes. Defining political violence as something that is being wielded primarily or exclusively against Trump is to condone his behavior. Trump’s efforts to exploit the latest attempt on his life illuminate his motives. The comedian Jimmy Kimmel recently offended Trump and his family by joking on Thursday that Melania Trump has “a glow like an expectant widow.” The premise of the bit was obviously that Melania is the younger trophy wife of a wealthy older man, not that Trump was likely to be murdered soon. (Kimmel made the joke before last weekend’s shooting.) Still, Trump absurdly labeled Kimmel’s gold-digger joke a “despicable call to violence” and revived his demands that ABC fire the comedian. Trump and his allies perceive that the near-universal dismay at another attempt on the president’s life has given them a supply of political capital that they can employ toward their desired ends, many of which involve suppressing criticism. This demonstrates how the gunmen who thought they were going to stop Trump have empowered him instead. It demonstrates as well that the Trumpian right’s supposed abhorrence for violence and antiauthoritarian rhetoric is purely selective.