This is the first of two episodes this week dealing with the aftermath of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Part two will feature an interview with historian Roger Griffin, an expert on socio-political movements and terrorism.
Rather than an anomaly, violence has been part of the fabric of American politics since the earliest days of the republic. Men fought duels to defend their honor. Patriots attacked Loyalists and Loyalists attacked Patriots during the Revolutionary War. The first attempted assassination of a president took place in January 1835. A misfire saved Andrew Jackson’s life.
Southern newspapers glorified John Wilkes Booth after he murdered Abraham Lincoln. Presidents Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901) and Kennedy (1963) were felled by assassins’ bullets. The Ku Klux Klan waged a campaign of lynching and terror to keep emancipated Black people out of ballot boxes and elected offices. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were gunned down within a few months each other in 1968.
More recently, disturbed individuals tried to kill or harm Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And, of course, on Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” stormed the U.S. Capitol to thwart the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Jeremi Suri discusses the persistence of political violence in America. Mr. Suri wrote an op-ed for Time about this disturbing history.
“We still don’t have a grip on the ways in which the words, the partisanship and the anger of the last year or two years encourages people to do outrageous things,” Mr. Suri, who teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, says in the podcast.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcast.
