America’s toxic political climate faces calls to ‘tone it down’ after assassination attempt on Trump

WASHINGTON — “Tone it down!” That was the plea from one Republican congressman as he came to grips with the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a political rally in the Butler Farm area where he grew up. Addressing the nation Sunday, Biden pointed to past examples of political upheaval, including Jan. 6 and more recently harassment of election workers, and said, “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence, ever.” Still, one of Trump’s potential vice-presidential picks, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, said on social media over the weekend that Biden’s earlier rhetoric against Trump “led directly” to the attempted assassination. And House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said it’s time to “turn the temperature down in this country,” also singled out for blame Biden’s recent comments during a call with political donors in which the president said, “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Johnson said he knows Biden didn’t literally mean Trump should be targeted, but added, “that kind of language on either side should be called out.” Nick Beauchamp, an associate professor of political science at Boston’s Northeastern University, said there is an opportunity now for political leaders to “start framing their critiques of the others in words that explicitly denounce violence.” From the the 1968 killings of American leaders Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to the 1981 attack on President Ronald Reagan, to shootings of Republicans and Democrats in the past decade, the violent strain has always been part of American politics. Last summer, FBI agents fatally shot a Utah man who had threatened to assassinate Biden and had referred to himself as a “MAGA Trumper.” That followed a series of drive-by shootings earlier in the year targeting Democrats in New Mexico, a startling outburst that led to criminal charges against a failed state legislative candidate who had parroted Trump’s rigged-election rhetoric. Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on domestic terrorism, said, “The warning lights have been blinking red regarding violence in this election cycle for months, if not years now.” As Trump took the stage Saturday evening, he had opened the rally in Pennsylvania as he often does, marveling at the “big beautiful crowd” gathered to see him — and demeaning Biden’s own crowds as paltry in comparison.