That Trump has himself become a victim of political violence is unsurprising, given he has been a key enabler and legitimator of it for many years. In 2017, for example, his response to the killing of a counter-protestor at a White supremacist rally in Charlottesville was to argue that there were “very fine people on both sides” (Klein, 2018). In 2023, he characterized those opposing him as “thugs that live like vermin” (Kurtzlben, 2023).  Building on his long-standing habit of characterizing undocumented migrants as criminals, despite evidence (Ye Hee Lee, 2015) they are no more likely to commit violent crimes than people born in the U.S., he recently claimed they are “not people….these are animals”  (Layne et al., 2024).

Not only are these statements racist and hateful, they constitute examples of “dangerous speech” — rhetoric that dehumanizes and portrays a particular group as posing a mortal threat to others and thereby helps to warrant violence against them. For years now, Trump has been banging this dangerous drum about illegal migrants from Latin and South America and Muslims from anywhere as well as deploying the tropes of antisemitism (Blake, 2022) all of which greatly contribute to a climate that leaves people more vulnerable to racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic violence. Multiple studies show racist hate crimes and online harassment rose (Giani & Méon, 2021), not only in the U.S. but elsewhere, after Trump’s 2016 election. Incidents involving violence against Americans of South Asian origin in which xenophobic and/or anti-Muslim sentiment was identified as a motivating factor grew by 46% (Modi et al., 2018) in the year following his election.

Dangerous speech by a leader is especially concerning because the shared sense of identity that bonds leaders and followers is a powerful influence on our beliefs and behaviors, insights which underpin the social identity theory of leadership (Haslam et al., 2020). In Trump’s case, that bond is particularly potent, characterized by some as a cult-like dynamic (Hassan, 2020). Indeed, it is strong enough to cause some people to rapidly change their minds on significant issues of principle so as to maintain fealty to Trump: YouGov polling (Orth, 2024) before and after Trump’s conviction in May on 34 felony charges in the Stormy Daniels hush money case found that the proportion of Republican voters saying criminality was undesirable in a president fell from 34% in February to just 19% in June.

YouGov also reported just 17% of Republicans thought it was ok for a felon to be president before Trump’s conviction, but after it that number rose to 58% with a further 19% unsure. Put another way, before the conviction 83% of Republicans did not think it was ok for a felon to be president, but after Trump’s conviction this number dwindled to just 23%.  

Far from inspiring his followers in ways that uplift them to become moral agents and leaders in their own right, the promise of transformational leadership theory, Trump has instead degraded their capacity for facing up to objectively provable facts, thinking critically and engaging in moral reasoning. Accordingly, they turn a blind eye both to his bizarre, unhinged ramblings — such as his incomprehensible discussion of electric powered boats and sharks during a rally in Las Vegas on June 10 — and to his repeated flirtations with political violence — such as him “joking” that if re-elected he would be a dictator “but only on day one” (Colvin & Barrow, 2023).

All this helps in creating a context in which political violence comes to be seen as not only legitimate but necessary, in particular by Trump and his supporters. Perhaps its most potent expression to date is the manner in which Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election were foundational in motivating the January 6th, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has shifted the norms, values, and beliefs of his followers such that lawless and even violent actions by him, if re-elected, seem unlikely to dent their devotion to him. Moreover, he has won the backing of the Supreme Court to claim absolute immunity from prosecution for “official acts” (Debusmann, 2024). Such influences likely increase his potential to engage in lawless or even violent actions, especially if re-elected.

Accordingly, while the assassination attempt on July 13th, 2024, brought Trump within a hair’s breadth of the most stupid of prizes — his own martyrdom — his actions show us he is playing a long, stupid game in which other acts of politically motivated violence are being continuously rendered ever more possible.