Should it be surprising that over half of Americans who identify as “left of center” believe that assassinating President Donald Trump is justifiable?
That’s what a new study from Rutgers University has found. According to the survey produced by the university’s Social Perception Lab that asked 1,264 U.S. citizens about their attitudes toward political violence, 55% of all self-identifying “liberals” believe killing the president is a justifiable means of pursuing their political goals. Trump’s highest-profile partner in government, Tesla CEO and Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk, is also seen as a justifiable target for assassination by 48% of the same respondents.
This is the fruit of hysteria that Democratic politicians and their allies in the news media have nurtured in their followers for the past eight years. This is a political faction that considers “misgendering” to be “literal violence,” but it is one also building an assassination culture.
The Rutgers poll comes amid a wave of violent attacks against Tesla cars and other property in recent weeks in which arsonists have lit up charging stations and Tesla cars have been shot at, vandalized, and set ablaze. In one particularly disturbing incident, “incendiary devices” were removed by a bomb squad from a Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas. It also coincides with the large-scale “Hands Off” protests in cities across America at which wildly incendiary slogans on placards equate Republicans with the most evil men in history.
“Burn a Tesla, Save Democracy,” read one sign outside a Tesla showroom in New York City this past weekend. “Abort Unwanted Presidencies,” read another in California. Trump’s face with a Hitler mustache is regularly seen at large gatherings of Democrats. Teslas are referred to as “swasticars.” That Trump and Musk are on the same moral level as Hitler and Mussolini is now a given in Democratic circles.
Whatever you think of DOGE’s efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abusive spending or of tariffs and trade mayhem, neither can appropriately be compared to one of the greatest crimes in history. But such incendiary rhetoric reflects comments from Democratic leaders, which is normalizing political violence for the Left.
At a February rally outside of the Treasury Department, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) called Musk a “Nazi nepo baby … a godless, lawless billionaire” and promised he would face opposition “in the court, in Congress, in the streets.” Pressley was joined by numerous “mainstream” Democrats, who backed her rather than rebuked her as they should have. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said of Trump last Saturday, “We’ve got a president with the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover — a deranged dictator crashing our economy.”
In addition to calling him a fascist, left-wingers have called Trump a Russian plant, a racist, and a “threat to democracy,” the latter despite his being democratically elected twice. It can be no surprise that his life is in constant danger. Two assassination attempts were foiled even before he took office a second time. Radicals are encouraged by leaders in the Democratic establishment, and it has sought to turn talk of assassination, both direct and implicit, to an expression of patriotism.
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Fortunately, Trump turned his head at the last possible moment in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer and avoided an assassin’s bullet. Weeks later, a deranged pro-Ukraine activist hid in the bushes to shoot Trump but was spotted before he could do so. We still don’t know much about either episode, but it’s clear others on the Left would take Trump out if they had the chance.
Intimidation and violence are now a staple of the Democratic playbook. The party of the Left needs to repudiate this culture of violence before it is too late.