At the 2024 GOP convention in MilwaukeeTom Williams/AP
Since a 20-year-old gunman opened fire more than a week ago at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI has conducted hundreds of interviews and scrutinized the deceased perpetrator’s background and activity—only to find that his motive for the attack thus far remains a mystery. He was a registered Republican voter, but as threat assessment experts confirmed to me, the shooting likely was not driven by partisanship or political ideology. (That’s the case with many assassination attempts in modern history, as I chronicled in my book on threat assessment.) The experts I spoke with also warned that partisan exploitation of the assassination attempt is fueling rising danger for political violence.
None of that has stopped Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. from fanning the flames. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, Eric Trump reiterated the partisan blame leveled by various MAGA supporters—without any evidence—immediately after the shooting. “I said that the Democrats would stop at absolutely nothing,” he told Maria Bartiromo, angrily reciting a litany of alleged political persecutions against his father. “I’ve said on this show before I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something even worse, alluding to exactly what happened, and I was right.”
Donald Trump Jr. has also continued to push this narrative. “They’re trying to jail their political opponents. They’re now trying to kill him,” he said on the Megyn Kelly Show during the Republican National Convention, rattling off grievances similar to those from his brother. (In the interview, Don Jr. also said repeatedly that his father, whose ear was grazed by a bullet, was “shot in the face.”)
This continuing vilification adds to what law enforcement and threat assessment sources have told me is a paramount risk headed toward the election: potential bloodshed stemming from Donald Trump’s long-running campaign of incitement, including his message that he is supposedly the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by his political opponents. That core Trump narrative has now been supercharged by the assassination attempt, in which three attendees also were shot, one fatally. As I reported last week:
“Trump people were already mobilizing around the phony message of ‘we’re going to get screwed again by a rigged election,’” one threat expert told me, “and now they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.”
“Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them,” said another threat assessment expert. An intelligence bulletin from the FBI and DHS sent earlier this week to law enforcement throughout the country warned of potential “follow-on or retaliatory attacks.”
Notably, Don Jr. has participated in his father’s long-running political incitement also by spreading provocative memes and conspiracy theories on social media, and by mocking violence against Trump’s political adversaries. These tactics are part of the method of stochastic terrorism long used by Trump as president and after he left office, as I’ve documented ever since the runup to the January 6 insurrection.
Perhaps most infamously, Don Jr. ridiculed the home invasion and vicious attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, right before the 2022 midterm elections. Among other memes, he shared a photo of a “Halloween costume” that featured men’s underwear and a hammer, references to a baseless gay-sex conspiracy theory about the intruder and the weapon he used to bash Paul Pelosi’s skull. Since the assassination attempt, Don Jr. has posted a derisive meme targeting Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and another appearing to suggest that the shooter was related to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
An Arizona man was charged this month for allegedly threatening on a MAGA website to shoot FBI agents. He had an AR-15, a pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Demonizing partisan rhetoric and rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt—the latter also from the political left—are feeding into a volatile atmosphere that former President Trump himself has done much to foment. His continuing broadsides against the Justice Department and FBI have led to further menace and violent plots from his extremist supporters. A grand jury this month indicted a Georgia man for allegedly posting threats to murder FBI Director Christopher Wray. Also this month, an Arizona man was charged for allegedly threatening on a MAGA website to shoot FBI agents indiscriminately. Investigators found he had an AR-15, a pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition.
Trump’s relentless talk of a migrant “invasion” also has heightened concerns about political violence among security experts. In recent weeks, the ex-president has continued his theme of disparaging migrants as “terrorists” and “mental patients,” declaring again that they are “poisoning our country.”
This demagoguery marked the finale of the GOP convention last week when Trump gave a rambling, grievance-laden speech that lasted more than an hour and a half. He depicted an America under siege from bloodthirsty rapists and murderers “pouring into our country,” likening these alleged hordes to the fictional cannibalistic serial killer, “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.” In case his renewed message of American carnage wasn’t clear enough, he warned: “Bad things are going to happen.”