Editorial: Stoking the fire — Trump has edged on political extremism

Yahoo

4 hours ago

During his 10 years as a dominant political force, President Donald Trump has thrived on chaos and with his harsh and cruel vitriolic language and actions against anyone he dislikes or scorns, he encourages division, the opposite of what leaders should do.
This nasty atmosphere encourages hatred and extremism and it has contributed to a culture marked by political violence, like the Jan. 6 sacking of the U.S. Capital by Trump supporters or the two men who tried to assassinate Trump last year or the assassin who murdered Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband as well as wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife on Saturday.
The Minnesota gunman, now captured, had an apparent hit list found on him. While more particulars on his motivations and ideology will no doubt come into focus in the coming days and weeks, he committed these atrocious acts in an atmosphere heavy with recriminations and suspicions. And the tone comes from the top. Adding to this is the kind of garbage put on Twitter by Utah Sen. Mike Lee insinuating a connection between the killer and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
That idea seems to be an extrapolation from the fact that the shooter had served as one of 41 gubernatorial appointees on a minor unpaid workforce development board, to which he was reappointed by Walz after an earlier appointment by his predecessor, a position that is unlikely to have brought him into much if any direct contact with the governor. Yet Lee and others have fixated on this and the fact that the shooter had flyers for the nationwide 'No Kings' protests to assert that this must have been some sort of leftist terrorist. Who knows.
What we do know is that the coast-to-coast anti-Trump marches went on largely peacefully, including 50,000 protesters here in New York. If there was violence at the marches, Trump might have used it as an excuse to exceed his authority and bring in the National Guard 'to restore order' like he did in L.A., a clearly illegal and unconstitutional move.
Rather than seeking calm and condemning violence, Trump has sought to exploit it for a decade, going back to saying that 'Second Amendment people' could handle his opponent Hillary Clinton back in 2016 to telling militant extremists to 'stand back and stand by' in 2020 to pardoning all Jan. 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office this year.
The past few years have seen acts of political violence perpetrated by people at various points on the political spectrum against targets including Trump himself, who was very nearly assassinated last year. For a few days after his brush with death last July in Butler, Pa., Trump did cool down his rhetoric. But that pause didn't last and soon enough returned the acid language from the former president, who is now president again.
When forced on the question of whether he supports violence, Trump has had enough sense to never endorse it outright, but his actions have done nothing but point would-be instigators on the right to the conclusion that the president is tacitly on their side and will take concrete actions, like pardons, to facilitate their ends. Trump, sadly, just doesn't realize that political violence can't be controlled, once the seeds of hate that fuel it have been sown.
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