Assasinations And The Age of Acrimony

Despite the Presidents claims about his being targeted for his accomplishments - it is far more likely he is being targeted for the the divisions in our country he seeks

This is not new.

Like so much of what defines our turbulent times, the attacks on political leadership, even the life of the President are not novel in our short history as a country. Things have, in fact been worse.

Much worse.

Last night at the Washington Hilton, a gunman charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, fired shots, and was subdued by Secret Service agents before reaching the ballroom where the President of the United States, the Vice President, the FBI Director, and most of the Cabinet were seated. One officer was shot and saved by his vest. Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, is in custody. His writings, according to investigators, make clear he intended to target administration officials.

It is the third time in less than two years that political violence has reached the doorstep of the American presidency.

By the time Trump arrived at the White House briefing room (still in his tuxedo, still composed) he was already framing the moment the way he frames everything. “When you’re impactful, they go after you,” he said. “When you’re not impactful, they leave you alone.” He went further, reflecting on the history of presidential assassination attempts and the men who survived or didn’t. “When you look at the people that have either – whether it was an attempt or a successful attempt, they’re very impactful people. Just take a look at the names. They’re the big names, and I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot.”

There it is. The thesis hiding in plain sight. However wrong and misguided it sits there like everything Trump puts out into the world and country, a proclamation of his own victimhood standing shocked (shocked!) that his daily assaults on fellow countrymen will inspire the violence he seeks.

Trump’s instinct was to locate last night’s violence in his own biography, his own consequence, his own record of accomplishment. The implication being that the attempts on his life are a tribute to his impact – a perverse honor, a confirmation of greatness. What this interpretation deliberately ignores is the more obvious and more troubling explanation: that political violence in America has far less to do with the accomplishments of its targets than with the conditions its leaders create.

This is not new. And that is exactly the problem.

What is happening in the United States right now fits a recognizable historical pattern, one that Americans have largely forgotten because the period of stability that followed the mid-20th century convinced us that the violent chapters of our history were aberrations rather than warnings.

They were not aberrations. They defined an era and it was one far worse and more violent than our own.

Historians, like my friend Jon Grinspan who wrote a book a highly recommend to anyone concerned about our current times and interested in putting it into a historical context The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 call the decades following the Civil War through the early 1900s the Age of Acrimony. It was a period of razor-thin elections, apocalyptic political rhetoric, rapid economic dislocation, surging immigration, and the systematic collapse of trust in public institutions. Two presidents were assassinated in twenty years. James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901. But fixating on the presidents alone misses the scale of what was happening. Political violence during Reconstruction was not episodic. It was structural. Black officeholders were assassinated. Voters were beaten and killed. White supremacist organizations functioned as political enforcement arms, reshaping democratic outcomes through terror when ballots alone proved insufficient.

The violence was not outside of politics. It was hardwired into it. Political violence and assasinations defined a period of institutional collapse, demographic change and technological leaps that led to growing income inequality and social instability. Sound familiar?

The United States eventually moved through that period. But it did so not because the underlying pressures resolved themselves naturally, but because institutions held, leaders chose de-escalation over inflammation, and a civic culture developed that treated political opponents as legitimate rather than existential. That consensus held, with varying degrees of strain, for most of the twentieth century.

It is now fraying again, and along the same fault lines.

High polarization. Rapid social and economic disruption. Declining institutional trust. A media environment built on division and rage. And increasingly, a political vocabulary that does not describe opponents as wrong but as illegitimate, dangerous, and deserving of removal by any means necessary. The incident at the Washington Hilton follows two assassination attempts on Trump in 2024, the murder of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman in a politically motivated attack last June, and the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in September.

These are not isolated incidents. They are a recurring pattern.

What makes Trump’s response to last night particularly revealing is what it tells us about how political violence escalates rather than subsides. When a leader’s first instinct after an attempt on his life is to interpret that violence as evidence of his own importance – rather than as evidence of a country in genuine distress – he is not de-escalating. He is adding fuel. The message received by his supporters is that the violence confirms his greatness. The message received by his opponents is that the man is incapable of a moment of genuine national leadership even when one is desperately needed.

Forty-five years ago, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan as he emerged from the same Washington Hilton. Reagan survived and famously quipped to the surgeons that he hoped they were Republicans. It was a line that defused tension, conveyed grace under pressure, and reminded the country of its better self. Nobody who heard it concluded that Reagan was great because someone had tried to kill him.
The conditions that produce political violence are not a mystery. They are well documented and historically consistent: polarization that delegitimizes rather than merely disagrees, economic anxiety that has no institutional outlet, and leaders who pour accelerant on the fire because the fire serves their political interests. Donald Trump did not create these conditions in America. But he has been their most skilled and relentless cultivator. The attempted violence against him is not a tribute to his record. It is a reflection of the country he has helped to build.

History does not repeat exactly. The United States of 2026 is not the United States of 1881. The scale of organized political violence that defined Reconstruction has not returned. There are no militias systematically overthrowing state governments. But political violence does not arrive fully formed. It escalates. It begins at the margins, with isolated actors who can be dismissed as lone wolves and aberrations, and it becomes normalized not through frequency alone but through the reaction of institutions and leaders to each successive incident.

Do leaders de-escalate or do they inflame? Does the public demand accountability or does it rationalize? Do institutions hold or do they accommodate?

These are the questions that determine whether a society stabilizes or slides. And right now, on each of those questions, the trajectory is not reassuring.

Last night at the Washington Hilton, journalists in black tie dove under their tables while Secret Service agents with tactical rifles moved across the dais. The President of the United States was evacuated from the most famous press dinner in American life, held in the same building where a president was nearly killed in 1981. And by the time Trump reached the briefing room, he was already talking about how impactful he is. Always the victim never the instigator.

Political violence is never acceptable. Donald Trump does not deserve to fear for his life. He holds all the cards and yet he chooses division and rancor at every opportunity. We live in a time of growing political violence and while it is unique in the lives of all living Americans, it is instructive to remember something very important:

America has been here before.