In 2018, when then-California Sen. Kamala Harris appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, host Ellen DeGeneres asked what should have been a fun question.
“If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?”
Harris responded, “Does one of us have to come out alive?”
Flippant talk of violence has always been around, but it spiked when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 and has reached ridiculous levels in the 2024 battle for the White House between Harris, now vice president, and the former president, who was shot by one would-be assassin and likely targeted by a second.
The July 13 assassin attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, sparked the New Tolerance Campaign to look at the violent comments against Trump and Harris, and it just provided Secrets with its findings.
Not surprisingly, Trump has faced many more threats, even of death, than Harris. Gregory T. Angelo, who heads the group that confronts intolerance double standards in society, said the report found 44 cases of public figures threatening Trump and 17 against Harris.
“Violent threats and extreme rhetoric against the Republican candidate for president were found to be disproportionately more prevalent than those against the current Democratic president and Democratic presidential nominee combined,” the 36-page report noted.
“Ending the crisis of hate and political violence in the United States requires that all hate be called out,” it added.
On Trump, the report found that media and public figures have crossed the line and possibly changed the way the country talks about politics. “Sustained hyperbolic speech propagated by the media and Trump’s political opponents have contributed to a cultural climate in the United States that incubates hate and extremism,” the report said.
On Harris, and President Joe Biden, the report also found examples, though nothing like what Trump has faced. “The American Right is not blameless in fomenting hostility. Joseph Biden, the current president of the United States, and the Democratic Party nominee for that role in the 2024 election cycle, Vice President Kamala Harris, have also been the targets of extremist threats and violence,” the report said.
The report quotes the hate speech and provides a location, too. Many of the names are from celebrities, politicians, and business leaders. The group even mined C-Span for comments.
SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS
Angelo said, “When NTC launched our HateMap.com project tracking leftist hate and political violence in July, we made a point of keeping it separate from presidential politics. At the same time, we couldn’t ignore the election — with at least two assassination attempts against President Trump, it was impossible not to.”
Angelo, a former president of the national Log Cabin Republicans, added, “There is perhaps no better barometer for the state of hate in American politics than the crucible of the current presidential election. What NTC found after nearly three months of research is a pattern of casual callousness on the Left vis-à-vis President Trump. The Right’s hands aren’t squeaky clean, either — as our report also shows — but there is a quantifiably disproportionate amount of hate and rhetorical extremism directed at President Trump compared to both President Biden and VP Harris combined. Members of the media, elected officials, and high-profile celebrities with massive social media followings would do well to dial down the animosity; it would go a long way to returning civility to our national discourse.”