I generally avoid political topics on this blog. I prefer to talk about things that make me happy. Yet, most people either don’t think critically or are just not well-versed in history. It is important to understand history and know actual history in order to be aware of the validity of contemporaneous statements and reports about topics like “political violence.”
I am something of a “facts freak,” so when I hear misinformation, revisionist history or outright lies, I feel the record needs to be set straight. This history of politics in America includes political violence, but the facts are also very revealing about its origins, perpetrators and victims.
The History of Political Violence in America
The best known example of early political violence in America was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. The assassination of President Lincoln was just days after the surrender at Appomattox and the end of the Civil War. Lincoln was the first Republican president and he became more and more convinced, after being elected, that slavery was morally wrong. Booth hated that Lincoln campaigned to end slavery and he had a deep-seated hatred for the Republican president.
In September of 1901, Republican president William McKinley visited the World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was in his second term and a very popular president after a victory in the Spanish-American War. On September 6, McKinley appeared at a meet-and-greet event at the fair; something McKinley enjoyed. As a large crowd gathered, and a long line formed for people to shake hands with the popular president, one person in that line was Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year-old avowed anarchist.
When Czolgosz was right in front of McKinley, the president raised his hand to shake hands and Czolgosz raised his .32 caliber pistol, concealed in a handkerchief, and fired two shots into the president’s abdomen, one passing all the way through his stomach. On September 14, President McKinley died from gangrene, which had formed on the wall of his stomach and caused blood poisoning.
In October of 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt was giving a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 53-year-old former president was standing in his open-air car, waving to a crowd outside a hotel, when a would-be assassin fired a Colt revolver at Roosevelt from only feet away.
The shooter was John Schrank, who was later determined to be insane. The bullet remained embedded in Roosevelt’s chest because doctors determined that was the better course of action, but it did exacerbate Roosevelts existing arthritis for the remainder of his life.
Political Violence in the 20th and 21st Centuries
In more contemporary times, political violence has followed a similar trend with all shooters coming from the same ideological framework.
In November of 1963, the nation was stunned by the assassination of Democrat president John Kennedy. The assassination happened during a parade in Dallas. The shooter was a Democrat Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald. In April of the same year, Oswald had attempted to kill a conservative former Army general. He was part of a pro-Castro organization and exhibited every trait of an ultra-leftwing activist.
In June of 1968, an anti-Israel, former Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan, living in Pasadena, California, assassinated Democrat Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy had voiced his support for Israel. Sirhan fatally shot Sen. Kennedy at a hotel in Los Angeles. Within the span of five years, both Kennedy brothers, from a storied family, had been killed by assassination.
Both Democrats were slain by members of the ideological left; not by conservatives.
Fast forward seven years and there was the assassination attempt of Republican president Gerald Ford in September of 1975 in Sacramento, California. Lynette Fromme, a far-left environmentalist and member of the Manson crime family, attempted to kill president Ford. A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun, took it from Fromme’s hands, and wrestled Fromme to the ground.
Only seventeen days later, again in California in very left-leaning San Francisco, Ford was again the victim of an attempted assassination. Sara Jane Moore, a leftwing political radical, took a .38 Special revolver to a hotel where Ford was speaking. Before he got into his car, he waved to the crowd across the street.
Moore took advantage of this moment to fire two shots at the president, one narrowly missing his head and the other shot striking a taxi driver. A bystander grabbed Moore’s arm and a police captain wrestled the gun from her hand, as other police joined in subduing her.
President Ronald Reagan broke all records as he carried 49 states during his re-election. After Reagan delivered a speech to a large union group in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. fired several shots at the Republican president from a .22 caliber revolver.
Hinckley had loaded the gun with bullets that were meant to do more damage and kill. One of the bullets ricocheted off the presidential limousine and struck the president under the left armpit. The bullet just barely missed the president’s heart.
Hinckley had fired off six shots, not only striking the president, but also striking Press Secretary James Brady in the head, striking police officer Thomas Delahanty in the neck and hitting Special Agent Tim McCarthy in the abdomen.
Hinckley was only committed to a mental health facility and never prison. Democrat-appointed judges allowed him to leave the hospital as early as 1992. He was granted extended time away from the hospital subsequent to the first release and then he got permanent release in 2016.
In January of 2011, the pattern of a Democrat being shot by a Democrat was once again played out in Tucson, Arizona, when Congresswomen Gabby Giffords was shot through the head by Jared Lee Loughner, another Democrat who had done volunteer work for the Democratic Party and was a registered Democrat. Giffords was holding an outdoor “Congress on your Corner” event, when Loughner opened fire, nearly killing Giffords and killing 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl and a judge. Twelve other people were injured. The media never mentions that Loughner was at this event, and earlier ones, because he was a local Democrat voter.
In June of 2017, a Bernie Sander’s supporter opened fire with a rifle on a group of Republican members of Congress during the annual Congressional Baseball game. The shooter, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson, shot six people including Republican House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a U.S. Capitol police officer, a Republican congressional aide and a lobbyist. Officers from the Capitol Police and Alexandria Police were able to take the assailant out. Rep. Scalise had to undergo emergency surgery. Hodgkinson was a left-wing activist who often said he hated Republicans.
Assassination Attempt on President Donald Trump
On Saturday, July 13, 2024, while giving a speech at a rally in Pennsylvania, former Republican president Donald Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt. Most experts agree that if Trump had not just turned his head a second earlier, the assassin’s bullet would have penetrated his head and killed him. It was that close. The bullet punctured the upper part of his ear cartilage.
The president had the good presence of mind to drop down immediately behind a horizontal bulletproof feature of the stage, which was adorned with a stars and stripes covering. He did this even before his protection detail reached him. He was bleeding from his right ear, but had just escaped almost certain death.
Like McKinley, president Trump had been the target of rhetoric from the opposing party and media that painted him as a threat, including being characterized as being a “Hitler,” “dictator” or “threat to democracy.” His political opponent, Joe Biden, just days before, on July 9th, had told political donors on a group call that there needed to be a “bullseye” on Trump. Clearly this rhetoric, repeated thousands of times daily by the media, inspired the assassin Thomas Crooks, as it motivated Leon Czolgosz 123 years earlier.
To hear that the Department of Justice has put out an urgent bulletin claiming that there could be “revenge violence” perpetrated by conservatives, is both disingenuous and concerning. It is always; what could happen, versus, what actually happens. We can look at history, both 159 years ago, and events from the past week, and see that political violence is very one-sided and not perpetrated by the conservative side.
Political violence is a real thing, but as we have seen from current events, and past American history, it is very one-sided and originates from the ideological left. To point at conservatives and assert political violence is a hallmark of the ideological right is just not factual or supported by historical facts. This makes the alert put out by the Biden DoJ more likely to be unsubstantiated and politically-motivated.
Unfortunately, the media will amplify this “revenge political violence” narrative a thousand times. Nobody will stop and assess the history of political violence. There will be no “investigative reporters” who will create a segment about the true history of political violence. The uninformed person listening to, or watching, cable TV news or local news casts will buy into the latest narrative and just assume that this is another “both sides” problem.
All political violence, not just some, has come from the left, both in 2024 and going back to 1865. With the discussion of “political violence” currently in the media, and talking points circulated to Democratic Party politicians, a history of political violence in the U.S. has to be understood and affirmed. There is political violence, and except for a couple of shooters determined to be mentally ill, all other political violence originates with Democrats and the political left.
Widespread Support for Harming the Former President
Maybe the most disturbing thing I have seen with my own eyes is the opinions of thousands of members of the left who have lamented that the shooter missed. On Twitter/X alone, I have read hundreds of these comments. I have never read a comment where a conservative wished physical harm to President Biden.
During Trump’s first term as president, a Shakespeare in the Park performance in Central Park, featured President Trump getting stabbed and murdered. Several prominent members of the left, from the world of music, from Hollywood and from politics, have all stated their wish for his death or murder.
Kathy Griffen posted a picture to social media in 2017 of her holding a bloodied, severed head of the former president. Actor Robert De Niro stated on the TV show The View, that he wanted to punch the president in the face. Madonna told a crowd in 2017 that she had thought a lot about blowing up the White House while Trump was serving as president. Rosie O’Donnell stated in 2017 that she would like to push President Trump off a cliff and linked to a game with that objective.
In 2016, rocker Marilyn Mason created a video for a song that showed Trump lying on the ground decapitated in a pool of blood. Comedian George Lopez tweeted a cartoon image of former Mexican president Vincente Fox holding the decapitated head of President Trump with the caption: Make America Great Again.
Larry Wilmore, a member of Comedy Central, stated in 2016 that he wanted to suffocate President Trump with a pillow case. Actor Mickey Rourke told TMZ in 2015 that he would like to beat Trump for 30 seconds and hit him with a baseball bat. In 2017, rapper Snoop Dogg created a music video for his song Lavender, which featured the rapper pointing a gun at Trump and shooting him.
There is one unhinged group in America when it comes to political violence and they pose a danger to people like President Trump every day. It has gone from rhetoric to an actual attempt to kill the former president. Nobody on the political left should ever mention political violence without admitting that they own it. Unfortunately, most Americans are spoon-fed “news” and don’t know history.