0:04

Oh, we see Donald Trump there at

0:06

a rally in Pennsylvania. You can see his

0:08

face. There's blood

0:10

coming from his ear. Not

0:13

exactly sure what has happened, but those are

0:15

Secret Service agents trying to pull Donald Trump

0:17

off the stage. The FBI continues to search

0:20

for a motive in the shooting. All

0:22

this comes as the Republican National Convention

0:25

begins today in Milwaukee. A

0:28

former president was shot. An

0:31

American citizen killed while simply

0:33

exercising his freedom to support the candidate

0:35

of his choosing. We

0:37

cannot, we must not go down this

0:39

road in America. This

0:42

Saturday, a gunman opened fire at a

0:44

Trump rally in Pennsylvania, injuring candidate and

0:46

former President Donald Trump, killing

0:48

one person, and critically injuring two

0:50

others. We're still learning

0:52

details about the gunman himself and how people will

0:55

react to this horrible event. But

0:57

what we do know is that it was

0:59

a tragic and terrifying inflection point in an

1:01

already tense presidential campaign. I'm

1:03

Adam Harris. Our regular host, Hannah Rosen, is

1:06

working on a special project. With

1:08

me to talk about this distressing moment in

1:10

American politics are two Atlantic voices. One

1:13

is staff writer and historian Anne Applebell.

1:15

Hello, Anne. Greetings. And

1:18

the other is Atlantic executive editor Adrienne

1:20

LaFrance. Hey, Adrienne. Hey, Adam. Thank

1:23

you both for joining me for this bonus episode

1:25

of Radio Atlantic. So Anne, on

1:27

Saturday, Americans saw something that they aren't

1:29

used to seeing in this modern era.

1:32

As you've processed this with everyone else, what have

1:34

you been thinking about over the last few days?

1:36

I've thought quite a lot about

1:39

the normalization of violence. There

1:41

was an attempt to kidnap

1:43

Nancy Pelosi. The attacker

1:46

used a hammer to attack her husband,

1:48

but had meant to reach her. During

1:51

the January 6th events, there

1:53

were calls for the murder of Mike Pence. He had

1:55

a noose there ready for him. It's hard to know

1:57

how serious that was, but it was certainly... the

2:00

language of assassination was present. And then there was

2:02

also an attempt, however

2:04

serious, still hard to

2:06

tell, to kidnap and assassinate the

2:08

governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. So

2:10

we're actually in a moment when

2:12

the normalization of violence, to use

2:15

that phrase again, is

2:17

part of the culture. And I should

2:19

say it's not only famous people, it's

2:21

election officials, it's ordinary,

2:24

you know, low-level, you know,

2:26

local politicians. The idea that

2:28

violence is an okay way to express

2:30

your political opinion is much more widespread now

2:32

than it was even just a few

2:34

years ago. And Adrian,

2:37

thinking about some of those recent events

2:39

of political violence, even in this election

2:41

cycle, in a cover

2:43

story last year, you wrote about American

2:45

extremism and you cited a 2022 UC

2:48

Davis poll that found that one in

2:50

five Americans believed political violence would be

2:53

at least sometimes justified. And

2:55

one in 10 believes that it would be justified

2:57

if it meant returning Trump to the presidency. So

3:00

what does this most recent instance say

3:02

about the undercurrent of political violence in

3:05

America? Well, I think Anne

3:07

is exactly right that the signs

3:09

of a society

3:11

becoming more comfortable with

3:14

political violence have been all around us

3:17

for a while now, concerningly. I mean,

3:19

it's terrible. You

3:21

know, you mentioned the UC Davis

3:23

study, they found a small but

3:25

substantial percentage of Americans believe

3:28

that lethal violence is justified

3:31

to get to their preferred

3:33

political ends. You

3:35

see more Americans bringing weapons to political

3:37

protests in recent years, you

3:39

know, political aggression often expressed in the

3:42

rhetoric of war, you know,

3:44

the building of political identities around hatred

3:47

for the other or hatred of one's

3:49

political foes, rather than articulation

3:51

of whatever value someone might have. So this

3:53

has been in the air, in

3:56

addition to the, you know, concrete

3:58

examples that Anne provided about. violence.

4:01

Anyone who tracks this has been warning for

4:03

years that we're in it and that it's

4:05

getting worse. And you mentioned something that

4:08

we're thinking about weapons and how you

4:10

know guns factor into all this. What

4:13

is the sort of ramping up of

4:15

access to firearms meant for the

4:17

forms that political violence can take an

4:20

American society? Well one expert who

4:22

I talked to in recent years you

4:24

know I had been asking about where

4:26

we should anticipate there to be violence

4:28

because the nature of political discourse is

4:30

so dispersed it's not you know often

4:32

you hear people invoke the possibility of

4:35

another civil war and for Americans I

4:37

think you think of the Civil War

4:39

of the 19th century understandably but the

4:41

kind of fight we're having politically is

4:44

different today just the way

4:46

society is organized is different and this person

4:48

that I asked you know I'd asked what

4:50

where should we look for the threats of violence

4:52

and I remember you know

4:54

more than one expert telling me

4:57

that it's likely to be in

4:59

places where there's already militia groups

5:01

emerging where people who do

5:03

agree strongly with one another sort of

5:05

bump up against one other you know

5:07

there's heightened partisanship and in particular swing

5:09

states so the states that came up

5:11

again and again in those conversations were

5:13

Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona

5:16

and so you know I think

5:18

guns are broadly available in America generally

5:20

but certainly you know with an incident like

5:22

this you have to ask about access to the weapon

5:25

that was used. Yeah and and so

5:27

as Adrienne mentioned right we often bring up

5:29

this idea of a civil war kind of

5:32

around when we're thinking about political violence because

5:34

that's our that's our sort of touchstone example

5:36

right but is that the right

5:38

way to be thinking about kind of political

5:40

violence in America? It's funny I

5:42

saw the movie Civil War the one that

5:44

came out recently and although it

5:46

was better than I thought it was gonna

5:48

be it struck me as

5:51

wrong because if for those of you who

5:53

haven't seen it there's sort of two sides

5:55

fighting and they have big weapons they have

5:57

tanks and helicopters and there's a literal war

5:59

inside do not States with people, teams

6:01

of people shooting other teams of people. And

6:04

that doesn't feel to me like what could

6:06

happen here. I think the

6:08

better idea of what could happen here is

6:10

something that looks more like civic

6:13

breakdown and a really good example might

6:15

be Northern Ireland. So Northern Ireland was

6:17

a very, very bitterly divided community in

6:19

which people literally had different identities. Some

6:21

people felt themselves to be Irish, some

6:24

felt themselves to be British, and that

6:26

wasn't reconcilable. You couldn't find

6:29

a halfway point in between where you were half and

6:31

half. And what

6:33

you had in Northern Ireland was a kind

6:36

of low-level constant violence.

6:38

So bombs, murders, assassinations,

6:40

explosions. So the province

6:44

was roughly ungovernable. And

6:46

over the years there were different phases.

6:48

I don't want to overgeneralize it. There

6:50

was a British police force that tried

6:52

to bring calm to

6:54

the situation. There were many years of

6:57

negotiations. But that seems to me the

6:59

kind of world that we could wind

7:01

up living in, or maybe parts of the

7:03

country could wind up living in. As you

7:05

say, maybe Pennsylvania, maybe Arizona

7:08

seems like a good possibility

7:10

given how many death threats have

7:12

been made to Arizona election officials

7:14

and other non-conformist Republicans in

7:16

Arizona, some of whom I've talked to.

7:19

And that's a model of a society

7:21

that feels ungovernable. And people are frightened

7:23

to go out of their house at

7:25

night, not because of crime, but because they

7:28

might be assassinated by the other side

7:30

or even assassinated by their own side

7:32

if they've been insufficiently partisan. I mean,

7:34

Northern Ireland also felt a little bit

7:36

like a gang war. So people

7:38

who tried to reach out to the other side

7:40

or who tried to become peacemakers

7:43

could also become victims of violence. So

7:45

anybody who was in the center or

7:47

anybody who wasn't a participant, you

7:50

know, became a target. And that's actually

7:53

where I see the United States going. And in

7:55

some senses, we're already there. I mean, it's a...

7:58

if you look at... if you hear stories... stories, as

8:00

I say, from elected officials and

8:02

others in states where they haven't

8:05

conformed to whatever the partisan rules

8:07

are, you hear them afraid

8:09

of violence. I was actually in Tennessee a few months ago,

8:12

and I met Republicans

8:14

there who didn't

8:16

go along with the MAGA version of Republicanism that's

8:18

prevalent in Tennessee, and some of them were afraid.

8:21

I mean, you can't say it in public. You

8:23

have to be careful how you

8:25

talk in front of your neighbors. It's even

8:28

worse, of course, if you're a Democrat. And

8:30

people became, people are afraid to participate in

8:32

politics. They're afraid to work for political campaigns.

8:35

For example, it's very hard to get Democrats even

8:37

to be candidates for the state, Senate, and

8:39

legislature in parts of Tennessee

8:41

because it's so dangerous to

8:44

be a Democrat. And I think we're already there

8:46

in a lot of parts of the country. What

8:48

would that sort of chilling effect, right, on

8:50

people's ability or willingness to want to go

8:52

into politics, what does that mean for our

8:54

broader democracy? It means

8:57

that, you know, politics become, instead

8:59

of a forum for civic participation,

9:02

and a place where we can iron

9:04

out our, you know, hard difficulties and

9:06

our differences through dialogue, it becomes something

9:08

that's fraught with danger. People

9:10

want to stay away from it. Maybe

9:13

people become cynical and nihilistic. This is what

9:15

happens in authoritarian countries. People don't want to

9:17

participate in politics because it just feels like

9:19

everybody is corrupt, everybody

9:22

is violent, everybody is, you know, the extreme

9:24

language puts a lot of people off, not

9:27

just from being

9:29

a candidate, but from participating in any way, even from

9:31

voting, or even listening to the political

9:33

news. And by the way, I've heard that a lot in

9:36

the last few days from people who are not journalists or

9:38

not in politics. I just don't want to hear what's going

9:40

on. I don't want to listen to the news. It's almost like I just want

9:42

to tune out. I just want to turn it off. Adrienne,

9:45

you've reported recently on the sort of

9:47

rise of political violence in America. One

9:50

thing that you said you learned in your reporting

9:52

was how other cultures sort of

9:54

managed to endure sustained political violence and

9:57

how they ultimately emerged with democracy still

9:59

in town. And I

10:01

think that's the thing that's kind of on all of

10:03

our minds, like how do we keep this democracy

10:05

intact? So what are the necessary

10:07

next steps to ensure that democracy

10:09

sort of lives on? Well, I

10:11

think Anne hit on it exactly.

10:13

I mean, you need people who

10:16

are willing to participate in the

10:18

project of self-governance. And that requires

10:20

capable people to lead at

10:22

all levels of society. It requires, in

10:24

my view, voters who are willing

10:26

to say enough. We're not going to tolerate violence,

10:28

and we're going to elect people who unconditionally

10:31

reject violence as a way of governing, or

10:33

as a way of life. But

10:38

I mean, the tricky part is

10:40

there's not, you know,

10:42

the history is not tremendously hopeful and there isn't

10:44

one blueprint. You know, when I set out to

10:46

report the story you referenced, Anne and I actually

10:49

talked about this a lot in the early stages

10:51

of my reporting, in part because I wanted to

10:53

hear from her about sort of what are the

10:55

other countries that got it right and what can

10:57

we learn from conflict resolution in Ireland or elsewhere?

11:00

And the truth is, once you're in endemic

11:03

political violence, it can take generations to get

11:05

out of it. I mean, certainly hope that's

11:07

not the case for us here, but it's

11:10

the sort of messy, almost boring day-to-day

11:12

work of democracy that needs to be

11:15

done, and that's exactly what's declining. Yeah,

11:17

you know, you mentioned that there isn't necessarily

11:20

a roadmap. When the U.S. has

11:22

reached these sort of pitched moments in the past, how

11:24

did we work our way back? Right.

11:27

So one example that I thought might

11:29

be, which I hoped was

11:31

a hopeful example going in, but then was

11:33

sort of disabused of

11:35

that optimism, was I had thought

11:37

about the paramilitary movements of the

11:40

1990s and sort of

11:42

the post-Waco climate

11:44

of political violence and how

11:47

in the late 90s, after the Oklahoma

11:49

City bombing, it seemed like tensions had

11:51

cooled. This was, you know, my sort

11:53

of like remembering that moment. It was

11:55

like, oh, things were tense, but then

11:58

they domestically cooled. some

12:00

scholars who study closely that

12:02

era and those movements. And what

12:04

they had told me was, actually,

12:06

it wasn't that we did something

12:08

right or there's something positive

12:10

we can replicate, but in fact, the Oklahoma

12:12

City bombing, which was a terrible attack that

12:14

killed, I think, 168 people, that

12:17

that was a cataclysmic act of

12:19

violence that then, of course, led

12:21

to accountability by law enforcement, which

12:24

sort of cooled the movements for a

12:27

while but didn't totally dismantle them. And

12:29

so, you know, obviously, you

12:32

don't want to think that worse violence is

12:34

the only path out, but that is something

12:36

I heard from lots of scholars is sometimes

12:38

it takes sort of, you know, people being

12:40

startled into recognition of

12:43

how bad things are in order

12:45

to move past periods of violence. And

12:49

this is kind of for both of you, just

12:52

thinking about this moment and

12:54

how it situates in the sort

12:56

of broader historical timeline of American

12:58

politics, right? Thinking about the

13:00

fact that this is a nation that began

13:03

with a revolution, right? It kind of began

13:05

with violence in a sort of different way.

13:07

How does this moment fit for you into

13:09

the timeline of American history? It's

13:11

funny, I recently read a book that

13:13

was published decades ago, which is Bernard

13:15

Bailyn's book, which is called The Ideological

13:17

Origins of the American Revolution. And

13:20

one of the revelations in it for

13:22

me was the, first of all, the

13:24

amount of violence that preceded the revolution,

13:26

so burning down the houses of colonial

13:28

governors. Also, the widespread

13:31

conspiracy theories, I mean,

13:33

that the British had a secret plot to

13:35

do this or that, and we need to

13:37

defend ourselves against it. In addition,

13:39

of course, the colonists had real grievances and

13:41

there were also many brave and valiant and

13:44

amazing people among them. And the process by

13:46

which we eventually wrote a constitution is pretty

13:48

extraordinary. But the resemblance of

13:51

that moment of violence and that moment of

13:53

anger to other moments that came

13:56

later, I mean, the most obvious one is the lead up to

13:58

the Civil War when you cycle

14:00

after cycle of violence, you know, whether it

14:02

was in Kansas, whether it was in the

14:04

southern states, whether there was a series

14:07

of violent events that preceded the Civil War. And then,

14:09

of course, there were a series of violent events that

14:11

followed the Civil War. As the North

14:14

tried to reestablish the Union and tried

14:16

to reestablish a constitutional state, there was

14:18

a rebellion against it, in

14:20

effect, that ended with Jim

14:23

Crow in the segregated South, which kind of kept

14:25

the lid on things for a while. And then

14:27

we had the Civil Rights Movement, which was another

14:30

era of extraordinary violence, another place I was

14:32

recently in Birmingham, and I went to the

14:34

Civil Rights Institute. And there's a

14:36

long wall there where they have a

14:38

timeline. And if you start in

14:40

the 40s and go into the 50s, I

14:42

mean, every week, every few

14:44

days, every month, there are incidents of

14:46

violence, whether they're bombings or protests or

14:49

somebody being beaten up. So some

14:51

of what's happening now feels very much

14:54

to me like it's a continuity. I

14:56

mean, it's a, you know,

14:58

we've reached these moments of bitter conflict in

15:00

the past. And we've had, they've

15:03

sometimes had very violent resolution. And the, you

15:06

know, what you just said, Adrianne, I think is

15:08

incredibly important, which is that sometimes people have, there

15:10

has to be a cataclysm before people understand

15:14

how bad things are and they move

15:16

back. And, you know, the Second World

15:18

War had that function in Europe, you

15:20

know, after the Second World, people said,

15:22

never again, let's rewrite the rules. After

15:24

the American Revolution, same thing, never again,

15:27

let's write our constitution to make it

15:29

possible to have a democracy and not

15:31

to have constant strife. I

15:33

don't know that we've reached that moment yet

15:35

in American politics now, where something happens and

15:37

it makes everybody draw back and

15:40

say never again. I mean, even in

15:42

the wake of this attempted assassination of

15:44

Donald Trump, one of

15:46

the first reactions from one of

15:48

the most prominent Republicans, J.D. Vance

15:50

was to essentially say, this is

15:52

Biden's fault. And, you know,

15:54

there was an immediate partisan,

15:57

ugly reaction on the part of a lot of people. Well,

16:00

and that's so interesting to me too,

16:03

because it's, we absolutely need to assess

16:05

who is responsible for stoking political violence

16:07

in America. You know, I

16:10

think calls for unity are important,

16:12

but not without, you know, the need for

16:14

scrutiny. At the same time, if

16:16

you look at the way political violence

16:18

operates, it really does operate similarly regardless

16:20

of the ideology behind it. And

16:23

so that's not to say we should both sides it.

16:25

Obviously we shouldn't. And I have found

16:27

it instructive to look at past periods of

16:29

political violence across the ideological spectrum, because you

16:32

see the same things happening over and over

16:34

again. Kind of

16:36

with that actually in mind, you mentioned a

16:38

little bit earlier that the

16:40

way out of this is for people to sort

16:42

of, you know, have the confidence to run for

16:44

office or people to become politically engaged. All of

16:46

that, all of that like good rosy stuff that

16:48

would actually be good for the fabric of American

16:50

society. But you

16:53

also sort of written about how officials

16:55

have been warning about potentially increased attacks

16:58

and political violence as we

17:00

move towards this November election date, which is

17:02

only a couple of months away. So what

17:05

are we doing to ensure that we

17:07

are steering away from more violence in

17:09

this next couple of months? How do

17:11

politicians sort of ensure

17:13

that we're not moving towards more violence?

17:15

So the best way to do this, and this is

17:18

also, there's a lesson from Northern Ireland here, the best

17:20

way to do this is to

17:22

make as much of the conversation as

17:24

possible about real life

17:26

in other words, as opposed to

17:28

your political identity. So you know,

17:31

about the economy, about building roads, about

17:34

schools, about education, about healthcare, because those

17:36

are issues that we can disagree about

17:38

and maybe even strongly disagree about, but

17:41

we're probably not going to kill each

17:43

other over them. Whereas

17:46

once when the argument is about

17:48

your identity versus somebody else's identity,

17:51

then you might kill them. And this was

17:53

the Northern Ireland lesson, actually, the peace

17:55

process was not about

17:58

making Catholics and Protestants. like

18:00

each other, and that was pointless. I mean,

18:03

they're not gonna like each other. But just

18:05

to bring them into common conversation. So, okay,

18:07

you don't like each other, but you can

18:09

talk about should the bridge be on the,

18:12

this part of the river, or should it be

18:14

further down the river? And should the road go

18:16

through this neighborhood, or should it go through another

18:18

neighborhood? And this was very granular work, and

18:21

there's some people who argued that even that

18:23

didn't work, and people still don't like each

18:25

other, and still could be another cycle of

18:28

violence there too. But the more we talk

18:30

about concrete things in the

18:32

real world, and the less we are

18:34

having battles of dueling identity,

18:37

the better. I mean, the catch is that battles

18:40

of dueling identity are more emotional,

18:42

and attract more attention, and make

18:45

people care more than

18:47

the conversation about how healthcare should be

18:49

financed. I mean, and actually the politics

18:51

of the United States, certainly since the

18:53

Second World War, have mostly been conducted

18:56

on that level. These were policy arguments.

18:58

What made, I don't know, Barack Obama

19:00

and George W. Bush different wasn't some

19:02

big identity clash. It was about, they

19:05

had different views of how the economy should

19:07

work, for example. And the

19:10

more we can get back to that, the better. Well,

19:12

and one thing I would just add

19:15

to that is, we also have to

19:17

recognize that, relative to earlier periods of

19:19

political violence, the informational environment we're in

19:21

is different, and that's not a good

19:23

thing. I mean, talk about stoking

19:25

emotional reactions. The architecture

19:27

of the social web is designed to, reward

19:31

anger, and a lack of

19:33

restraint, and outbursts, that we of course

19:35

are seeing now. And so, that's a

19:37

whole nother factor to contend with as

19:39

we're trying to navigate this as a country. This

19:42

is my last question for both of you,

19:44

and it's about the reactions people have had

19:46

to Saturday's shooting. Democratic representative

19:48

Jared Golden of Maine has cautioned

19:50

against what he's called, hyperbolic threats,

19:52

right? About the stakes of this

19:54

election, and said, quote, it

19:56

should not be misleadingly portrayed as

19:59

a struggle between. democracy or

20:01

authoritarianism, or a battle against

20:03

fascists and socialists bent on

20:05

destroying America. These are dangerous

20:08

lies." End quote. Now,

20:10

you both have written about the high stakes

20:12

of this election and the danger of another

20:14

Trump presidency. What's your reaction

20:16

to his comment and other similar

20:19

calls to tamp down criticism of

20:21

the former president? I

20:23

mean, I think you're saying this a lot, not just from him,

20:25

but you're saying this a lot on the right. And my

20:29

belief is that Americans are sophisticated

20:31

enough to be warned against authoritarianism

20:33

when that threat is credible, which

20:35

it is, and also

20:37

to not take that concern

20:40

and turn it into violence. And so

20:42

I think we need to be more

20:44

sophisticated than say, never

20:46

criticize anyone truthfully

20:48

lest someone take that as a

20:51

call for violence. It's not,

20:53

and the stakes of this election are high. So I think

20:56

our colleague David Fromm wrote a powerful

20:58

essay about the need for

21:00

nuance and the extraordinarily

21:03

complex moment. But

21:06

the idea that you can't criticize a

21:08

very powerful person credibly

21:11

is not the way to run

21:13

our country either. And

21:16

this, the one very, very

21:18

difficult point, and I think I alluded to

21:20

this already, is that one

21:22

of the main sources of the normalization

21:25

of violence in our political culture is

21:27

Donald Trump, who laughed at the attack

21:29

on Nancy Pelosi, who's talked about using

21:31

violence against political demonstrators, you know, and

21:34

on and on and on and on.

21:36

And I think if we're somehow not

21:38

supposed to talk about that, then we're

21:40

doing everybody a disservice because that's the,

21:42

that's a very important source of the

21:45

fraught nature of the current moment. We'll

21:49

of course, obviously be learning more in

21:51

the coming days, but thank

21:53

you both so much for talking to me. Thank

21:56

you. Thanks for having us.

22:01

This episode was produced by Kevin Townsend and

22:03

edited by Claudina Bade. It

22:05

was engineered by Rob Smierziak and fact-checked

22:08

by Sarah Krollewski. Claudina Bade

22:10

is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and

22:12

Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm Adam

22:15

Harris, and thank you for listening to this bonus

22:17

episode of Radio Atlantic. We'll be

22:19

back with a new episode as usual on Thursday.