Politics Today: News, Analysis & Debate Across the Spectrum
- President Donald Trump is escalating political rhetoric, fueling anger across the right-wing media ecosystem.
- Moderates express desire to deescalate, but cannot unilaterally stop criticism while Trump exploits tensions.
- Host warns that dangerous rhetoric flows from the top and amplifies through right-wing information networks.
- Experts caution that even without organized militias, a single aggrieved individual with a gun can spark violence.
- Concern grows about a retaliatory tit for tat dynamic that could spiral into more organized or widespread attacks.
Sommer: Yeah, you know, I was talking to some moderates recently who were saying, you know, I wish this political rhetoric would go down. But I think it’s just really difficult when the president is, you know, ramping it up like this. I mean, Democrats can’t really do a unilateral disarmament and say, OK, we’re not going to criticize Trump for a couple of weeks because of this, when he’s clearly seeing it as a political opportunity and relishing it. And it’s not just Trump, but the entire right-wing media apparatus and members of Congress. So I think it’s just difficult. I mean, what I think I think there are a lot of people on both sides who would really love sort of to chill out in terms of political language for a while. But you can’t really do that as long as Donald Trump is the president and acting this way.
Sargent: Yeah, it really all flows down from the very top. So you spend a lot of time in sort of these.
Right-wing informational, I guess, cesspools or whatever you want to call them, deep in the swamps or whatever. How deep do you think the anger actually is? It seems to me like in order for this to create a real downward spiral, like a real kind of plunge into something much worse, you’d have to cross over into some kind of more organized forms of violence from the right in response. And I’m not sure whether we’re at a point where we’d see that. What do you think?
Sommer: Yeah, I mean, hopefully we’re not at that point yet. And as you said, I mean, I think the challenge is, you know, I don’t think there are roving militias of Republicans who are, really like trying to take someone out at this moment. On the other hand, unfortunately, all it takes is one nut with a gun. And not just in this case—we’ve seen people become aggrieved, get wrapped up in their heads and on the internet, and then say, I’m going to go kill X person. I mean, with the Gabby Giffords shooting all these things. And so I think you’re right to note that I think this becomes really dangerous if there becomes sort of a retaliatory tit for tat situation.
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