Trump's would-be assassin echoed Democrats' dangerous rhetoric | Opinion

In the aftermath of the foiled assassination attempt on President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on April 25, the third in under two years, I have a lot of questions. I suspect most Americans do.

How many more times will we wake up to headlines about another attempt on a Republican president's life? How many more times will the Secret Service have to move in split seconds to stop a gunman?

Americans can feel gratitude for the Secret Service agents who neutralized the threat and still wonder how a teacher-turned-would-be-assassin got that close to the president in the first place.

The attack raises a darker question: What kind of political climate produces this level of hatred? What makes someone attempt an assassination in a room full of journalists, a setting where the act would be witnessed, filmed from every angle and pushed across every feed within the hour?

As a conservative who voted for Trump, I have watched two earlier attempts on his life and the murder of conservative icon Charlie Kirk in real time. My reaction is simple: Political violence should be condemned outright. It has no place in this country. We are better than this.

But the question lingers: Is America better than this?

The rhetoric reached the gunman

There is still much we don't know about the gunman or the security failures that let him into the room. But some things are already clear.

Political violence is not confined to one ideology. Still, in recent months, high-profile conservatives have been targeted for who they are and what they believe. Charlie Kirk was killed seven months ago. His widow, Erika Kirk, was at the dinner Saturday night and was rushed out after the shots were fired.

The alleged gunman, Cole Allen, left a manifesto. He wrote that he intended to work through Trump administration officials from highest-ranking to lowest, sparing only FBI Director Kash Patel, because he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crime."

The claims are false. They are also common liberal talking points that Democrats, former presidents and mainstream media outlets use on a regular basis.

Two days before the dinner, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked on his show that first lady Melania Trump had "a glow of an expectant widow."

Satire, of course. But is America better than joking about a sitting president's death, or his wife's imagined widowhood? Would the same joke have been told about Jill Biden? It would not have been.

On X, former President Barack Obama put all joking aside and praised Secret Service agents, but he also suggested that Americans didn't yet know the shooter's motives. Perhaps he hadn't seen the manifesto, but the shooter's motive is clear. It's important not to ignore it.

Trump met the aftermath with striking calm. "I lead a pretty normal life considering it's a dangerous life," the president said. "I really take it as it is. I do it for the country."

His composure points to something larger than the moment. America's strength has never rested on a single leader. It rests on principles, the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, the same ones that put him in that room. But the country feels more volatile than it has in a long time.

It is not only the American left that would benefit from chaos. Adversaries abroad would welcome an event that leaves the United States shaken, and an assassinated president would do it.

Which makes the deeper question unavoidable. What kind of country are we becoming?

The left must learn to live with a conservative leader without reaching for violence, or for rhetoric that turns political opponents into enemies and makes violence feel thinkable. Not for the sake of one leader. Not for the sake of one movement. For the country that lets us argue about both.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.