To the Editor:
Political violence has no place in this country and I’m glad former president Trump wasn’t seriously injured by this heinous assassination attempt. But that should not prevent us from having an honest discussion about several things.
Just days before this happened, the president of the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025, said we were “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”: an implicit call to violence.
One party, the Republican Party, has consistently blocked every attempt to stem the epidemic of gun violence in his country.
It was Trump’s supporters who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers.
It was Trump himself who said he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it,” who said there were “fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, who encouraged his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies and has consistently used violent rhetoric in his campaign, who wanted to call in the military against Black Lives Matter protesters, who said that former Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley should be executed and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be tried for treason.
Let’s be honest about which party—the Republican Party—has consistently endorsed violence as a legitimate means of resolving conflicts.
I’m not condoning what happened. I’m just saying that, given Trump’s and the Republican Party’s history of violent rhetoric, it’s not surprising.
Paul Hallasy
New York, NY
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