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CNN
15 hours ago
- Politics
- CNN
Political Violence Is Rising. What Can We Do? - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
Gov. Tim Walz (clip) 00:00:01 This was an act of targeted political violence. Peaceful discourse is the foundation of our democracy. We don't settle our differences with violence or gunpoint. David Chalian 00:00:13 Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota addressed his state and the country after the killings and attempted killings of two state Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses. He condemned the violence and urged others to do the same. Gov. Tim Walz (clip) 00:00:27 We must all, Minnesota and across the country, stand against all forms of political violence. David Chalian 00:00:34 In the days since the shootings, many have. We saw statements this week from politicians across the political spectrum. President Trump posted on Truth Social that, quote, "Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America." These shootings are the latest in a rising tide of political violence, one that my guest today has been closely tracking. Robert Pape has studied political violence for 30 years. He's a political science professor at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. For several years now, the center has observed an increase in support for political violence on both the right and the left. We talked about what he describes as a normalization of political violence in America, why it's happening, and what, if anything, can be done about it. I'm CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, David Chalian, and this is the CNN Political Briefing. Robert, thank you so much for joining me, really appreciate it. Robert Pape 00:01:40 Thanks for having me, David. David Chalian 00:01:42 'You wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that you believe we may be, quote, "on the brink of an extremely violent era in American politics." Obviously, we saw the horrific assassination and attempted assassination in Minnesota over the weekend. But as you know better than anyone who studies this, political violence is not new in America, but the research shows that we have seen perhaps an uptick in political violence. So, why do you think we are on the brink of a potentially extremely violent era? Robert Pape 00:02:18 David, I have been studying political violence for 30 years. For most of that time, I've studied international political violence. For the last five years, I have spent an enormous amount of time focusing on America itself. And the reason for that is for the last 5 years, we have begun to see not just upticks of political violence and not just one off events. We've begun to see a string of acts of political violence that, over five years, when you put it together, it's an era I call America's era of violent populism. Now, yes, we have had political violence, we've had acts of political violence here before the last five years. But you have to go back to the 1960s to see the whole set of events that have happened in the last 5 years. But let's just go back. Let's go back to the summer of 2020 when there were many, many peaceful George Floyd protests, but 5% of those George Floyd protest were riots. News Clip 00:03:28 A wave of protests over the death of George Floyd spread from coast to coast on Saturday and spilled over into the morning. Peaceful protests took place, as well as acts of vandalism in cities large and small. Robert Pape 00:03:39 Then we have January 6. Over 1,600 individuals, Trump supporters, stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn an election. News Clip 00:03:48 An angry mob was whipped into a frenzy yesterday. President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, incited the crowd before they went to storm and terrorized the Capitol. Robert Pape 00:03:59 Let's go to 2022. We see the attempt to assassinate Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House. It doesn't get her. She doesn't happen to be there, but it almost kills her husband. News Clip 00:04:10 Paul Pelosi still in intensive care following surgery after a violent attack at his home Friday that left him with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and his hands. Robert Pape 00:04:20 Right after October 7, we see campus unrest, essentially students storming buildings in ways we have not seen again since the 1960s. News Clip 00:04:32 At campuses across the country, once peaceful protests turning violent. Robert Pape 00:04:36 Let's just keep going to farther in 2024, two assassination attempts against Donald Trump. News Clip 00:04:44 The FBI, as I speak, is investigating a second assassination attempt of former President Trump just about two months to the day after Trump was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania. Robert Pape 00:04:55 And then of course he wins, and now we come to he is inaugurated and what happens almost immediately on the heels of his inauguration, we have dozens and dozens of attacks, political attacks against Tesla stations. News Clip 00:05:10 Police responded to 911 calls early Tuesday morning reporting gunshots and flames at the Tesla repair center. Robert Pape 00:05:16 Let's go into April. In April, we have the arson attempt against Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania. News Clip 00:05:23 Josh Shapiro and his family evacuated in the early hours this morning as police responded to what they're calling an act of arson. Robert Pape 00:05:31 'Then let's go still further. Let's go into May. We have the murder of two Israeli staffers in a pro-Palestinian act of political violence. News Clip 00:05:41 Two Israeli embassy staffers killed outside a Jewish museum here in D.C. The U.S. Ambassador to Israel is calling the shooting a quote, "horrific act of terror." Robert Pape 00:05:50 And then what happened just last weekend? We have last weekend, assassination and attempted assassination against Minnesota lawmakers, and he had another list of 45 targets. David Chalian 00:06:05 I'm curious how you tie the polarization, meaning the sort of Republican and Democratic divide and sorting ourselves and the way that our politics informs so much of how we sort ourselves in the country, how that intersects with this moment of this uptick in violence. Robert Pape 00:06:23 'So what we have done is we've done research to get at the taproot of what's occurring in that polarization. Yes, there's institutional reasons. Yes, there's social media, but there are deeper things happening, David. And what we are seeing is we'd been going through an era of dramatic social change. And that is what's underneath this polarization and what's in common with the 1960s, which was another era of social change that led to violent populism. So what are the social changes I'm talking about? Change number one is demographic. We are shifting from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy for the first time in our 250 year history as a country. Now, that's been happening drip-by-drip over the last several decades. So if you go to 1990, you would see about 75% or so of the American population was non-Hispanic white. Today, just in the last year that we have the census data, it's 58%. So we've seen quite a change. And in fact, what we're experiencing on that front started about 10 years ago, we started to move to what I call the tipping point generation. It will take about 20 years to go through this point where you're going from about 60% to about 48%, and that corresponds with the rise of Donald Trump, why he became a meteor when he rose and why his lightning rod issue was immigration, because as we're going through this change, David, this will affect politics, and it's very obvious that it will, which will then have other consequences. And so you have people on the right who don't want that change to go on. They'd like to reverse it and therefore support things like stopping immigration and also deportations in very aggressive ways. And now you have also then that provokes the left to be concerned, well, wait a minute, maybe these changes which they see as social good aren't going to happen. And therefore they want to keep the change going and also maybe even accelerate the change. So you get a spiraling effect, David, that's really dramatic. Now, there's another social change that's been happening parallel with this, which is economic. In the last 30 years, we've also shifted a dramatic portion of our wealth to the top 20% of America. And that, of course, a lot of it to the top 1%. And this is the top 20% and top 1% who are both Republican and Democrat. So this is not a Republican-Democrat issue. This is an elite versus everyone else issue. The more people are energized and really deeply worried on both the right and the left about the issue of demographic change, the more they support political violence. And what we've done to study this is we've conducted nationally representative surveys of support for political violence by Americans. We've been doing them since 2021. We just did the last one in May. And what you can see is the more they are concerned that elites now completely run the country and they can't have a say, the more they support political violence. So these factors are not just happening like out there in a culture war that doesn't matter. No, we're now having, we are going from cold culture war to hot culture war. And why it's not just these words polarization. David Chalian 00:09:59 We've just described this moment, the current state of political violence in America. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about what can be done. Stay with us. All of this to me begs this question, which is, what is the antidote? How do we fix this? You hear after some of these tragic events that occur of political violence, we've got to turn down the temperature, we got to lower the rhetoric. Is that sufficient? What are the fixes here? Robert Pape 00:10:43 Well, we have to understand that because political violence is political and because we have about 10 to 15% on the right and another 10 to 15% percent on the left supporting political violence now, the behavior of our leaders, our political leaders is really, really helpful. Is it totally sufficient? No, but it's the key first step because after all, if you can't get leaders to condemn political violence, how would you take more serious steps? And what I've been calling for, for several years now, is for leaders to step up and not to condemn just violence by the other side, but to condemn violence even when it's adjacent to their own constituents. And in fact, just with Minnesota, we see Mike Johnson making a statement. We even see Donald Trump issuing a statement. David Chalian 00:11:33 'And we saw the complete bi-partisan delegation in Minnesota issue a joint statement with one voice condemning the political violence. Robert Pape 00:11:41 Well, and that's where I was going to go because you see now we've reached such a pitch, and it's become so intense, and we're starting to mobilize now. And so what we need now is we need more serious joint statements. The Minnesota delegation, absolutely the best beginning, but I am calling directly for President Trump and Governor Newsom to make a joint statement and, ideally, a joint video where they will jointly say they condemn violence across the political spectrum, whoever that comes from. And I realize that sounds like a tall order, David, but so, too, did several years ago when I started calling for political leaders simply to condemn violence when it was adjacent to their own party. And that's now happening. We need to identify what would really help, and we need as people, as ordinary citizens, we need to demand that our leaders condemn political violence and make more joint bipartisan statements, and where better than the president of the United States and the Governor of California. David Chalian 00:12:50 Yeah, I just wonder beyond our political leaders, you know, does everything really permeate from our political leadership, or is there some other input that needs to be happening here as well? Robert Pape 00:13:01 The political leaders are actually a way to push back. And you see our surveys also find that 75% of Americans abhor political violence and they want our leaders to make these bipartisan statements. The real thing those leaders do with those joint statements, David, is they empower the 75% so if somebody's at the water cooler and they start laughing, oh yeah, we got to get those shooters of Donald Trump, some better training. You can get some pushback from others at the water cooler and say, hey, no, I know we don't like Trump, but we don't have to go there, okay. Well, that's how you actually turn the dial back. But where does that all begin? How do you develop that? Well, you have a national conversation like we're having right now on this podcast, and then you also have national leaders come together, and this starts to push things back, and this is how we really will do it. And if we don't, then I'm afraid the summer here could be quite dicey, and we're heading into a tumultuous 2026 midterm. David Chalian 00:14:06 My last question for you is you pointed a couple of times to the 60s and the political violence we saw in the 1960s. Is there a lesson to be learned about how the country emerged out of that era of political violence that can be applied here? Robert Pape 00:14:21 There's actually a couple of lessons here. So lesson number one is, in the first part of the 1960s, the left mobilized the civil rights movement, and they adopted very peaceful means. Now there was some state violence, but the left was very peaceful, and they achieved a lot of success. In the later part of 1960s, this was where the violence on the left was most manifest, and what did that do? That brought in Richard Nixon, so law and order. So one of the big messages here is that it's very important for people to hear that protest is the heart of democracy, and it can work, but if it gets into violence, it is very likely to produce the exact opposite of what people want. The other thing to say is that in that era, one of the big accelerants, it wasn't just the civil rights movement, it wasn't just the women's rights movement and gender issues, it was also the Vietnam War. And so we were able, because the Vietnam War was having such deleterious effects on who we sent to the war. We sent the people who were the poorest people to die in Vietnam, not the rich people like Donald Trump, not Dick Cheney. And so what we need to see is that yes, there can be some steps we can take, but those steps were bipartisan when they were taken. They were not one side. And what we did is ended conscription, and we also pulled back from the Vietnam War, but those things were bipartisan. So David, what I'm talking about on the bipartisan is not the be all and end all. I don't mean to say one video by president Trump and Gavin Newsom is going to solve everything, but we've got to start there. If you can't get the joint statement, how are you ever going to get the bipartisanship on these more difficult issues? And so this is why I say we start here and then we go forward. David Chalian 00:16:12 Professor Robert Pape, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it. Robert Pape 00:16:15 Thank you for having me, David. David Chalian 00:16:17 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
New York Times
11-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Pardoned by Trump, Jan. 6 Defendants Assail Those Who Worked on Their Cases
In one post, a rioter pardoned by President Trump after taking part in the storming of the Capitol expressed his 'joy and happiness' at just how badly prosecutors who worked on cases like his own were 'hurting right now' after some of them were fired. In a different post, another pardoned rioter taunted agents who worked on investigations linked to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, ridiculing them for worrying that they would be revealed and asking sarcastically, 'Why would you be afraid of us knowing your names?' In a third post, yet another rioter granted clemency by the president featured the image of a document that clearly showed the name and cellphone number of the F.B.I. agent who oversaw his case. In the past few weeks, an increasing number of Jan. 6 defendants who benefited from Mr. Trump's mercy have gone on the attack on social media, lashing out at the agents and prosecutors who worked on their criminal cases. The pardoned rioters have assailed these law enforcement officials as 'traitors' or 'evil,' often doxxing them by posting their names, photos and contact information online. Many of the messages are likely protected by the First Amendment and, at least for now, there is no indication that they have led to any violence. But the posts also suggest a mounting and disturbing desire for revenge on the part of the pardoned rioters, and experts have raised concerns that the frequency and number of the digital attacks could increase the risk that violence might eventually occur. 'The bottom line is, it's extremely dangerous,' said Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has studied the Jan. 6 defendants for more than four years. 'Research tells us that efforts like this help to make it seem as if targeted attacks are actually popular and have a mantle of legitimacy. That itself could nudge assailants over the edge.' The torrent of online anger comes as many of the federal officials subject to it were already under pressure from the Justice Department itself. More than a dozen prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases were recently fired from the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, and the department has sought information about thousands of F.B.I. agents and employees who worked on Capitol riot investigations. Those moves have left many law enforcement officials feeling as though the agencies that employ — or employed — them no longer have their backs. And their sense of disappointment only deepened last week after the new U.S. attorney in Washington, Ed Martin, vowed to investigate a different set of threats: those that were reportedly made against employees working for Mr. Trump's close ally Elon Musk. 'There is certainly a lack of public support for Jan. 6 prosecutors and agents from political appointees in the Justice Department,' said Alexis Loeb, a former federal prosecutor who supervised many Capitol riot cases. 'But there are still people in the department and the F.B.I. who recognize that threatening people just for doing their jobs is simply wrong.' Inside the F.B.I., agents and others who worked on the cases are deeply concerned about losing their jobs but also fear for their personal safety, given that the Justice Department asked for names of employees who handled the Jan. 6 investigations and a terrorism case. The inquiry into the riot became the department's largest, leading the F.B.I. to open about 2,400 cases, more than half of which resulted in charges being filed. Brian Driscoll, the F.B.I.'s acting director, said in an email on Thursday to bureau employees that the Justice Department was aware of the 'risks posed to you and your families should these lists become public.' He noted that F.B.I. personnel could become victims of doxxing or swatting, when false emergency calls are placed with the intention of drawing a heavily armed police response. He also pointed to internal guides that F.B.I. personnel can use to reduce their digital footprints, making it harder to be targeted. The attacks by Jan. 6 defendants against federal law enforcement were only the latest in a series of such assaults reaching back to Mr. Trump's first term in the White House. In August 2022, after the F.B.I. found reams of classified material during a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's private club and residence in Florida, social media erupted with outraged posts by Trump supporters. One of those supporters, Ricky W. Shiffer, was so angered by the search that he tried to break into an F.B.I. field office near Cincinnati and ended up being killed in a shootout with the local police. Something similar, but less dramatic, happened this spring after Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts at a criminal trial in Manhattan. After the verdict, pro-Trump forums online erupted with hateful messages about the jurors in the case and apparent attempts to leak their personal information. 'Hope these jurors face some street justice,' one anonymous user of a forum wrote. 'Wouldn't be interesting if just one person from Trump's legal team anonymously leaked the names of the jurors?' This weekend, Mr. Trump's new homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, made claims on social media that the 'corrupt' F.B.I. was behind a recent leak revealing that a 'large scale' immigration enforcement action would soon take place in Los Angeles. 'We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law,' Ms. Noem wrote. Ms. Loeb began seeing messages targeting her online even before Mr. Trump offered clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack. After a right-wing journalist posted on social media in December that she was leaving her job as a federal prosecutor before the change in administrations, she experienced a surge in attacks, including one post that identified her by name above an image of gallows. 'That's the cure for corruption,' the caption said. But the volume of posts increased sharply after Mr. Trump's reprieves, which seemed to embolden many of the defendants. Some began assembling lists of agents and prosecutors, collecting names and photos from their compatriots. When one of the defendants asked online on Monday whether he should build 'a public database' listing the names of all the Jan. 6 prosecutors and agents, he got dozens of affirmative responses. 'I can contribute,' one of his fellow defendants replied. 'I am going to get my popcorn ready,' another wrote. In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Trump's clemency grants, two of the country's most prominent right-wing extremists — Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers — asserted that they wanted Mr. Trump to seek revenge on their behalf against the investigative teams that worked on Jan. 6 cases. 'Success,' Mr. Tarrio said at the time, 'is going to be retribution.' Last week, Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, started what appeared to be the first step toward that goal when she announced the formation of a 'weaponization working group' inside the Justice Department. One of the group's missions, Ms. Bondi said, would be to examine what she described as the 'improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions' arising from the department's Capitol attack prosecutions. How she had reached those conclusions remains unclear. But the online messages from the Jan. 6 defendants themselves have added an additional threat, Mr. Pape, the political scientist, said, by making public the personal information of several prosecutors in particular. Mr. Pape said that people who saw addresses and phone numbers on social media could choose to use them as what he called 'targeting information.'
