Fueling the Climate of Violence

These are times when we must demand leaders to calm conflict, not intensify it

Illustration by erhui1979 via Getty Images.

How does a climate of violence escalate? Let me count the ways.

An ex-president aggressively attacking prosecutors, judges, potential witnesses and court staff. A candidate for House speaker and his thuggish cohorts threatening violence if he doesn’t get the job. Angry elected officials on the left and right spreading misinformation about the Hamas-Israel war. Hyped-up media triggering hate-filled viewers (and even murder).

All of this illustrates this coarsening chapter in our public life when too many Republicans in power have cynically recognized that threats and violence are useful tools to expand their power, drive attention and (they hope) get what they want. In such a polarized period, with an ongoing rise in hate crimes, it feels almost nostalgic to suggest political leaders and media from across the political spectrum should be acting responsibly and urging harmony and restraint.

Instead, exacerbated by some eight years of Donald Trump’s degrading, demagogic attacks against his perceived enemies and vulnerable populations without consequence, too many have figured out how to exploit free speech and pursue this sinister strategy. It doesn’t help that many old-school journalists remain frozen in time, reluctant to confront this danger directly by giving it the consistent attention it requires. As if running for president or grasping for the speaker’s gavel really does provide immunity to say and do whatever you want. As if once it becomes a political contest a flip is switched and reporters fail to see the deeper issues amid the heat of the race.

Let’s rewind and review the last week. This continuing climate of violence asks us to pay attention and demand more from our leaders. That begins with refusing to allow ourselves to normalize an ex-president, leading GOP candidate and criminal defendant facing 91 felony charges who sadistically and malignantly exploits his platform to abuse his power and attack anyone who he deems his enemy.

On Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron, overseeing the $250 million New York Supreme Court fraud trial against Trump, threatened possible imprisonment after the defendant failed to remove an attack on the judge’s clerk from his campaign website. While Trump lawyer Chris Kise claimed the failure was “inadvertent,” noting that the attack had been removed from Truth Social, Engoron called it a “blatant violation” of his gag order and fined Trump $5,000. “In the current overheated climate,” the judge said, “incendiary untruths can and in some cases already has led to serious physical harm and worse.”

This came 17 days after Engoron imposed a limited gag order “forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any members of my staff,” about which the judge added that “personal attacks of any member of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them.” That, of course, didn’t stop Trump from continuing to attack Engoron and call him “a lunatic” in a weekend post.

This followed U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan’s limited gag order in Washington, D.C., which attempts to stem his attacks on prosecutors, witnesses and court personnel involved in his upcoming trial over whether he conspired to obstruct the 2020 election results. While Trump’s legal team is likely to file an appeal this week claiming the order violates his First Amendment rights, Chutkan was clear about the need for restraints.

“Mr. Trump can certainly claim he’s being unfairly prosecuted,” she said, “but I cannot imagine any other case where a defendant is allowed to call the prosecutor ‘deranged,’ or a ‘thug,’ and I will not permit it here simply because the defendant is running a political campaign.”

Recognizing the thorny free speech issues, the judge did note that the presidential candidate is still allowed to continue attacking President Joe Biden and even a potential witness, Mike Pence, as long as he focused on the former vice president’s policies. And, of course, he did, describing the president as “crooked,” calling all the charges “Biden indictments” and telling his cult followers on Truth Social that “nothing like this has ever happened in the USA before!”

Is there some version of a drinking game when we count how many times Trump violates his gag orders before his judges determine they need to take more drastic action to stop his violent incitements?

I wrote on Friday about the dangerous bullying campaign of Jim Jordan and Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, one of his “no” voters, making public the “credible death threats and the barrage of threatening calls.”

But this story of intimidation took another twist on Friday: Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported that Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson, a close Jordan ally, said in a GOP closed-door meeting that they’re not responsible for the death threats received by opponents. “They are getting the death threats,” Sherman reported him saying, “because they voted against Jordan.”

Get it? If you do what we want, you will avoid the threats of violence. If not, well, you have only yourself to blame. Talk about political mafiosi.

While I hesitate to share the extent of the abuse, it’s important to note how it’s been picked up by the cultists doing these extremists’ (and Fox News’) bidding. In one reported voicemail, a congressman was called a “pig,” then the caller threatened to “come follow you all over the place. We’re going to be up your ass. F--king nonstop. We are now Antifa. We’re going to do what the left does.”

Thankfully, this ugly strategy may have backfired for now—Jordan dropped out of the contest for speaker on Friday when he saw his number of backers dwindled further in the humiliating third vote. But don’t doubt that their intimidation and fear campaign will be resurrected again in coming efforts to get what he and his Freedom Caucus want, especially when possessed by the knowledge that it’s just what Donald Trump supports.

In his Oval Office address on Thursday, President Biden talked about the dangers of Islamophobia and the heinous murder in Illinois of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American, who was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife by a 71-year-old man. The boy’s mother, who tried to call 911, was also stabbed more than a dozen times. “The child’s Palestinian Muslim family came to America seeking what we all seek—a refuge to live, learn and pray in peace,” Biden said.

The killer’s wife reportedly told investigators her husband, who was the Palestinian family’s landlord, was a regular listener of conservative talk radio. He had grown increasingly enraged by the Israel-Hamas conflict and became convinced that he and his wife “were in danger” because of the family’s background. The Justice Department is now investigating the case as a federal hate crime.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said, in a DOJ statement, “I am heartbroken by the abhorrent killing.” And more: “This incident cannot help but further raise the fears of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities in our country with regard to hate-fueled violence…No one in the United States of America should have to live in fear of violence because of how they worship or where they or their family come from.”

Detroit police are currently investigating the murder on Saturday of Samantha Woll, who was the 40-year-old board president of a Detroit synagogue. While they have neither found the perpetrator nor the motive, Police Chief James White said that “no evidence has surfaced suggesting that this crime was motivated by antisemitism.”

Let’s hope so. And at a time of global instability with ongoing images and stories of violence in Israel and Gaza, it’s particularly necessary to demand political leaders from across the spectrum to not further inflame the climate of violence.

That includes irresponsible people like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted on X “Anyone that is pro-Palestinian is pro-Hamas”; Ohio Rep. Max Miller saying he was “advocating for...no rules of engagement”; and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib (who represents the district Wolf lived in), who was quick to blame Israel for the deadly Gaza hospital bombing without factual knowledge and has since refused to delete her post after Biden and U.S. intelligence insisted this was the result of an errant Islamic Jihadist rocket.

America needs leaders who urge calm, not inflame, officials who understand their responsibility to deal in facts, not emotions and pre-determined narratives. We need politicians who recognize it’s their duty to help the nation ease the climate of violence, not self-serving demagogues bent on exacerbating it.

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