According to Donald Trump, the assassination attempts against him are an example of his uniqueness as president. “The ones who do the most, the ones who have the most impact, are the ones they attack,” Trump said Saturday night after a gunman stormed the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, allegedly intending to assassinate the president and senior officials in his administration. “It pains me to say I’m honored by that, but we’ve done a lot.”
There is no doubt that Trump has been an influential and historic figure, although the country is deeply divided over whether this has been for better or worse. Few figures of the modern era have generated both the devotion and anger that he has aroused. But political violence, of which Trump has been the most prominent target of late, but which has also been directed against figures across the political spectrum, has many roots. In some cases, it is difficult to discern the reason.
Authorities have not yet been able to determine the reason, or several reasons, for the incident in which Trump almost died: the shots that grazed his ear during an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, and that caused the death of one person in the crowd and seriously injured two others. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old kitchen worker who authorities say shot Trump and was killed by a Secret Service sniper at the scene, left no evidence indicating a motive for his action or any clear partisan or ideological leanings.
His online history showed that he had researched both Trump and then-President Joe Biden in the month before the attack, as well as the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention. But the absence of a clear motive for Crooks doesn’t mean we don’t understand the forces driving politically motivated violence. Civil unrest is a determining factor, as was the case in the last major outbreak of violence, in the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and in the 1970s, when President Gerald Ford was the target of two attacks within a 17-day span.
The passions that exist today in a deeply polarized environment are intense. And they are exacerbated by increasingly common rhetoric that portrays political opponents as mortal threats to society, as well as the accelerating effect of social media. “It is now easier than ever for people with mental illness to become radicalized,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University who has written extensively about extremist political movements.
“When they become radicalized, although their agenda is not always completely clear, they are usually responding to conspiracy ideas and theories that circulate in society.” Trump’s allies and advisors have presented the three incidents with firearms in which he has been involved as the product of a pathology typical of the left. They have bolstered their argument by citing an anti-Trump pamphlet that authorities say was written by the alleged attacker.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, shortly before he allegedly stormed the security perimeter of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner armed with two firearms and three knives. Although he did not mention Trump by name, Allen’s alleged letter expressed outrage at the president’s policies, alluded to sexual misconduct and stated that he was “no longer willing” to “stain my hands with his crimes.”
At the White House on Monday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “As you read this shooter’s manifesto, ask yourselves: How different is this near-murderer’s rhetoric from what you read on social media and hear in various forums every day?” “The crazy lies and slander against the president, his family and his followers have led unbalanced people to believe crazy things, and they are inspired to commit acts of violence because of those words. This has to stop,” he continued.
But Trump, even as he insists that he is the target of violent rhetoric, has often spread falsehoods and conspiracy theories about his adversaries, going so far as to call them “enemies within.” And their own words often incite violence. Meanwhile, the president and his allies have taken advantage of the threats against him to justify a new offensive against his adversaries. On Tuesday, former FBI Director James B. Comey was indicted for the second time by a federal grand jury, after a federal judge dismissed charges filed last year.
In this new case, he is accused of threatening the president by posting, and then deleting, an image on Instagram last year of seashells that formed the phrase “86 47.” Trump is the 47th president, and “86” is a slang term for getting rid of something. Administration officials claimed that Comey was inciting the assassination of the president. Comey stated that he considered the arrangement of the projectiles, which he saw during a walk, as a political statement, not a call to violence.
What Trump and those around him fail to mention is that prominent Democrats have also been targets of political violence in recent years. These incidents include the beating that Paul Pelosi, husband of Representative Nancy Pelosi (California), who was then Speaker of the House of Representatives, received in his home in 2022; a 2020 plot by members of a right-wing paramilitary group to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; the 2025 arson attack on the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, where Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were celebrating Passover; and the 2025 murders of Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
It is now easier than ever for people with mental illness to become radicalized.
Americans’ tolerance for the use of violence to resolve differences is the subject of growing interest and debate. This issue has gained greater relevance among political scientists and other experts since the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the results of the previous fall’s presidential election. Some polls have indicated that public opinion has become more lenient on the matter.
In an NPR-PBS News-Marist poll conducted last fall, nearly 3 in 10 adults said they agreed with the statement: “Americans may have to resort to violence to get the country back to normal.” That figure, which included 28 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Republicans, had increased 11 points in the previous 18 months. But results like this depend on how the question is asked, and other studies have found that far fewer Americans justify the most extreme forms of political violence.
The Polarization Research Laboratory, a multi-university collaboration, collected data following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025. It found that less than 1% of Americans found partisan assassination acceptable. “This near-total rejection demonstrates that there is no significant support for political violence in the United States,” their report concluded.
However, the figures also indicated that more than 90 percent of Americans they fear political violence. Nearly a third said they were reluctant to put a political sign in their yard or a sticker on their car for fear of being targeted. That, in effect, could be the collateral effect of violence directed against the country’s leaders. It has fostered a climate in which even many ordinary Americans no longer believe they can safely express their political ideas and disagreements.