Incendiary Rhetoric and Guns: A Cocktail With Deadly Consequences

Maribel Hastings

The attack against Donald Trump on July 12 last Saturday is a sad reminder of the role that violence has played, and continues to play, in U.S. political history. In recent years, it has manifested in various forms, from mass shootings against minorities in domestic attacks to the violent assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump’s followers.

And although there are calls from both political camps to tone down the rhetoric, and Trump has come to say that he wants to “unite” the nation, the reality is that the ideological postures and extremist proposals of the Republican Party continue to be the same, and will not cease with the attack. They will only intensify.

Although an incident of this type should lead people and the country to introspection, to reassessing priorities and calibrating the message, in the case of Trump and his supporters the effect has been entirely to the contrary: blaming Biden and the Democrats for the attack, feeling emboldened, and imposing their extremist agenda like a locomotive train. Trump has used the attack to reap millions in campaign funds.

In civilized societies there is no room for violence, and that includes the political process.

As his Vice President candidate, he chose the Republican senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, who — after being a Trump detractor — turned into a staunch defender. Vance blamed Biden, without proof, for the attack. On top of forming part of the MAGA band that insists that the elections were “stolen” from Trump in 2020, Vance has said that, were he vice president in 2021, he would have impeded certification of Biden’s win. He has minimized the taking of the Capitol by Trump’s mobs.

Moreover, Vance defends all of Trump’s positions on immigration, beginning with his machinery for mass deportations, and deploying the military and police from Republican states to conduct raids in Democratic states, as well as establishing enormous detention camps. Vance promotes the “replacement” conspiracy theory, defended by white supremacist groups, that says immigrants are coming to replace Anglo Saxons to remove them of their political power. He also spreads the lie that immigrants are to blame for the opioid crisis, covering up the role of the large pharmaceutical companies, with whom Vance has strong ties, in this scourge.

On top of that, he believes that immigration brings with it violence and poverty, when study after study demonstrates the contrary: that immigrants are less likely to commit violent acts than citizens, and immigrant labor is the motor of the U.S. economy in various sectors, not to mention their contributions to the Treasury through the payment of taxes, and the solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Which brings me, once again, to the attempted assassination of Trump. Although the former president accuses immigrants of being “criminals and rapists,” the young man responsible for the attack was not an immigrant. He was a young white man, a U.S. citizen, affiliated with the Republican Party. It is still not known why he waged an act of violence against Trump, although it is reported that he was, allegedly, a victim of high school bullying.

The Republicans have also swept under the rug the fact that the young man used one of the rifles that they defend, come hell and high water, in the bloody battle over gun control in this country, the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle known as “America’s Rifle.”

In other words, here various elements combine: national political polarization, and extremist Republican rhetoric that goes from talk to action, as was proved in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump fanatics who wanted to impede the certification of Biden’s victory. The same rhetoric translates into the extremist public policy proposals contained in Project 2025, which serves as a road map for a second Trump administration. To this cocktail, add the easy access to guns, and problems with mental health that afflict the nation. Is anyone surprised that these things occur?

In civilized societies there is no room for violence, and that includes the political process. But a Republican Party that has ceded leadership to the most extremist sector must understand that incendiary rhetoric has deadly consequences, as rhetoric against immigrants and minorities has had, in massacres like El Paso, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, to name a few. We do not know what led the assassin, in the case of Trump, to perpetrate an inexcusable act that took one life and wounded others, including Trump.

But it is a reminder of the deadly effect that rhetoric can generate in some minds. He who sows wind, reaps storms.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.