Minnesota assassinations: How we got to this awful point | Opinion
Donald Trump sounded the right notes in reacting to the horrific assassination of a Democratic farm-labor leader in Minnesota. His comments about the killing of former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband is worth quoting in full from Truth Social: “I have been briefed on the terrible shooting that took place in Minnesota, which appears to be a targeted attack against State Lawmakers. Our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the FBI, are investigating the situation, and they will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law. Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!”
It must have been hard for Trump to call a place that voted for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton “a great place,” but Trump shouldn’t get points for doing the basics. A normal president would be on the phone to the other state lawmakers who survived an assassination attempt apparently by the same alleged gunman captured by police Sunday night. A normal president would travel to Minnesota to show compassion for a community whose peace has been so brutally shattered.
The issue of political violence in American politics should be near to Trump’s heart. He is after all the survivor of two assassination attempts, including one that left him wounded. The difference between Donald Trump (bloodied), Gabby Giffords (injured for life) and John F. Kennedy (dead) can probably be measured in millimeters.
As The New York Times reported on Sunday, American politics has long been plagued by violence, but in recent years violence has become commonplace and threats nearly ubiquitous, reaching a record last year.
- In 2017 a shocking attack on the bipartisan congressional Baseball game left 4 wounded including Republican leader Steve Scalise and a capital policeman.
- In 2020, a plot to Kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled.
- In 2022, a crazed intruder attacked Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer.
- In 2024, there were two assassination attempts on Trump.
- In 2025, an arsonist tried to set Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s state mansion ablaze.
Those were the individual attacks on figures with a national profile that gathered the most attention. Between the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol in 2020 and last October, Reuters had counted 300 lower-level political attacks, including such sickening local events as the man in Northern Michigan who “enraged by his hatred of Donald Trump used an all-terrain vehicle to run over an 81-year-old man who putting up a (Trump) yard sign.”
Offices firebombed, Teslas set on fire
It is no longer uncommon for bullets to pierce the windows of the politically active, or for vocal political advocates to be assaulted and political offices to be firebombed. When Tesla became a lightning rod in Elon Musks’s rise to power, a rash of attempts to burn Telsas, their dealers and their chargers swept the nation, in one case involving a college student in Kansas City.
Both Democrats and Republicans have supporters who are eager for violence. They can be seen in the burning Waymos of Los Angles and the storming of the Capitol in D.C. in 2021.
Both parties speak in such extreme language, and it isn’t hard to see violence as part of the predictable product of those words. During one election, Joe Biden, often described as a moderate, told a Black audience that Republicans wanted to see them back in “chains.” Barack Obama talked of bringing guns to knife fights. Republicans have blamed Democrats’ claim that Trump is a “threat to democracy” for spurring his attempted assassins.
Trump is on a whole other level in terms of the violence in his language and perhaps prompted by it. He has plainly called for assaults on reporters and protesters alike, threatening “heavy force” against those who planned to protest his birthday military parade. His false claims that the 2020 election was stolen fired the imaginations of thousands who stormed the United States Capitol while Congress was counting votes. Among their violent threats were calls to hang Mike Pence, Trump’s own handpicked vice president.
Insurance, abortion and gun control
But for all the power of violent and threatening rhetoric, I don’t think that is what is triggering this frightening turn in our politics. Rather I think it is the all-or-nothing, no-compromises approach to policy at the federal, state and local levels that turns politics from a matter of friendly disagreement to a cause of violence.
I first noticed this during the Obama administration with the battle over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The fact that it barely passed did not cause those tasked with turning congressional words into regulatory reality to seek accommodation with those upset by the law. Instead they set out to impose it the way Roman legions imposed Roman law on the conquered.
That moment climaxed with a Supreme Court case in which the Obama administration fought tooth and nail to have anti-abortion Catholic nuns buy insurance plans for their employees that covered what the nuns thought of as murder. An administration that sought comity with those on the other side would never have gone so far.
Republicans are no different. It would be one thing to use their congressional and Supreme Court majorities to end Democratic hopes of gun control for a generation or more, but that is not enough. In their new One Big Beautiful Bill, they plan to remove restrictions and taxes on sound suppressors, what liberals and gun-control advocates call “silencers,” They’ve been regulated since 1934.
National Guard, Marines to LA
In a time of political violence, such an extreme move literally activates the fight or flight response of those who fear that the the next targeted assassination won’t come with a window-shaking BANG, but instead a softer sound for slaughter. A Congress that sought comity with those on the other side would never have gone so far.
For all his posturing as a man changed by the grace of God on the day a nerdy community college student turned gunman nearly killed him (and did kill his supporter), Trump is still perhaps the greatest avatar of the kind of all-or-nothing politics that I believe fuels this river of violence flooding the fields of our democracy.
You can see it in the fact that calling out the National Guard in Los Angeles was not enough; he needed to call in the Marines. You can see it in a DOGE that killed lifesaving programs for millions right along with frivolous efforts to export drag culture to Latin America. And most sickeningly, you can see it in Trump’s decision to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, even those who assaulted the police officers for whom Trump proclaims such respect.
As we look upon those grieving two more lives taken from us in political violence, there are no clean hands. For this to end, we don’t just need to change our rhetoric. We need to turn to a politics with a humble understanding that we all might be wrong and respect for our neighbors and family who disagree with us. It isn’t just a matter of decency; it can literally mean the difference between life and death.
This story was originally published June 16, 2025 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Minnesota assassinations: How we got to this awful point | Opinion."
