The recent assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband have led the media to try to figure out a way to blame the Republican Party for it. On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe invited Michael Tomasky, to elaborate on the current state of political violence and stated that “the MAGA grip on the Republican Party, with its winking at violence” is the problem.
On Monday, Tomasky published an article titled, “America Is at a Terrifying Turning Point-and There’s No Going Back.” The motivation for his piece focused on the assassination that took place in Minnesota, Senator Padilla’s actions during Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference, and ICE handling the New York City mayoral candidate, Brad Lander. To Tomasky, these events are worse than the political violence in the 1960s and 70s:
I say in this piece, we did go through a period of pretty extreme political violence in the United States in the late 1960s and early and mid-1970s. This feels worse to me. This feels more permanent. That felt like it was aberrational because it was about a couple of issues that caused a generational convulsion, Vietnam and civil rights. This though feels different because frankly, one of our two major political parties winks at, and sometimes abets, and then sometimes literally pardons political violence.
Tomasky later voiced that the people who experienced the Vietnam War or the civil rights movement knew it would end, but emphasized what is happening today feels “permanent.” To the left-wing media, the political violence today “feels worse” because they can blame it on the Republican Party.
Surprisingly, host Joe Scarborough played devil's advocate by pointing back to the two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life last summer. Scarborough observed what should be obvious: “This obviously is not just a MAGA right phenomenon.”
Tomasky's response was in conflict with the facts:
Well, there doesn't seem to have been a strong political motivation for either of those shooters. Obviously, those were horrible events. But there doesn’t seem to have been a strong political motivation identified by the FBI in either of those cases. More broadly, though, Joe, you make a fair point and a point that I should address. There’s some political violence that emanates from the left, there’s no question about it.
But there were political motivations behind Trump's assassination attempts. The media quickly brushed over Trump's almost assassin at Butler, PA, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and there are still questions that need to be answered. But you don't attempt to kill Trump if you're a Republican. The second almost-assassin at Palm Beach, Florida Ryan Wesley Routh, did have a handwritten letter addressed to “Dear World” that read, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry I failed you,” and $150,000 to anyone who could “finish the job.”
If Trump’s assassination attempts were not brought up in that segment, would American citizens just have to forget that political violence has happened to Republicans? It’s important to see how quick the liberal media is to side with what supports their agenda, but when someone from the opposing party is the victim of violence, it is forgotten.
Click here for the transcript:
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
6/18/25
6:44 a.m. EasternJONATHAN LEMIRE: Let's bring in the editor of The New Republic, Michael Tomasky. Ed Luce, of the Financial Times, still with us as well for this conversation. Michael, good to see you. Your recent piece reflects on the consequential events of this past weekend with the headline, “America Is at a Terrifying Turning Point-and There's No Going Back.” Tell us what you mean.
MICHAEL TOMASKY: Well, good morning Jonathan. I think we all woke up Saturday to that absolutely shocking news out of Minnesota about the shootings. And it was just very hard to process. And then of course, we followed the manhunt over the succeeding days and learned more about the assailant, the alleged assailant.
That was preceded, though, by what happened to Senator Padilla in Los Angeles the previous week. And now ever since I wrote that piece, it's been followed by what happened to Brad Lander, the Mayoral Candidate in New York yesterday, when he also was manhandled by ICE agents. You can't watch these things and not see a pattern. They always teach us in journalism that three is a pattern, but more seriously, I mean, you can't. watch these things and not suspect that something bad is happening that's new and unique and that isn't where we've been before.
I say in the piece, we did go through a period of pretty extreme political violence in the United States in the late 1960s and early and mid 1970s. This feels worse to me. This feels more permanent. That felt like it was aberrational because it was about a couple of issues that caused a generational convulsion, Vietnam and civil rights. This though feels different because frankly, one of our two major political parties winks at, and sometimes abets, and then sometimes literally pardons political violence.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: And Ed Luse, you covered similar ground in your latest piece with this chilling headline, “Return to the American Assassin.”
EDWARD LUSE: Yeah, so I strongly agree with what Michael just said, that we're at a, we've been at a turning point for a while. The difference between previous periods of political assassination, political violence, fringe sort of terrorist kind of activity in the late 60s and the 70s was that that was not being exhorted from the White House, that was not being encouraged by the White House.
What Donald Trump has done, and it's the first big act, of course, when he, after he was inaugurated this time in January, was to pardon those hundreds of people who were felons because of the Jan six storming and of course, commuting the sentences of those who had plotted it and been involved directly in violence. That signaled that Trump has your back, if you commit violence in his cause. He has also recently said he's considering pardoning the nine men who were convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Again, exactly the same. Exactly the same signal green light is being sent from the White House. We never had that coming from the White House, under LBJ or under even Nixon, let alone under Carter. This is a very, very different kind of situation. So I strongly agree with Michael's point that there's a pattern here, and that pattern originates from the top, not from the fringes.
JOHN HEILEMANN: Hey, Michael, it's Heilemann here. I think, you know, you see the, it's not doesn't feel coincidental that you've seen the assassinations. You've seen the Senator Padilla. Now, here in New York you've seen a Mayoral Candidate, the Comptroller taken away. These are, you know, talk about three's a pattern, you know, etc. As you say.
And I think in some respects, obviously it feels it feels more focused than the violence in the 60s. The point that you make more – I'm not sure, worse or better, because some of the things happened in the 60s were pretty horrific, from Kent State to the bombings at Columbia, etc, etc. But the point you make also is here to stay. And I want to try to get you to comment on that.
What makes this feel to you as though the 60s was transient and that the patterns we're seeing now might be even longer lasting?
TOMASKY: Because you felt the Vietnam war was going to end eventually, you felt that the civil rights movement was, you know, that at some point we were going to find some kind of equilibrium there. It's arguable whether we have even yet today. But, you know, those didn't feel like things that were permanent features of our political life and culture. But this does now. And because as I wrote and because, as Ed said, it's coming from the top. It's being abetted and winked at by the White House. And that's a really different thing.
Now, will that change? Maybe that will change. You know, if the Republicans lose spectacularly in 2028, assuming there's an election and the Democrats win and Republicans decide to do an autopsy and decide to change course. But I think the MAGA grip on the Republican Party, with its winking at violence and sometimes even worse than that. I think that's here to stay for the foreseeable future, for sure.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, Michael, of course, people on the MAGA right would remind you and remind everybody in this conversation that it was Donald Trump himself who was a target of two assassination attempts over the past summer during the middle of the campaign. I think one of you, I, I think it may have been Ed talked about hard to imagine the horrific consequences if those one of those two assassination attempts had been successful. So this obviously is not just a MAGA right phenomenon. What explains what happened to Donald Trump twice over the past summer?
TOMASKY: Well, there doesn't seem to have been a strong political motivation for either of those shooters. Obviously, those were horrible events. But there doesn't seem to have been a strong political motivation identified by the FBI in either of those cases.
More broadly, though, Joe, you make a fair point and a point that I should address. There's some political violence that emanates from the left, there's no question about it. But, you know, here's the difference. Antifa, you know, they hate the Democratic Party as much as they hate the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is just part of the capitalist oppressor class. To those people. They weren't running to the polls to vote for Kamala Harris. And, you know, if those kinds of groups had offered their support to Harris or any high ranking Democrat, it would have been, I'm sure, spurned. But not that any such offer would have been made because those groups hate the Democrats.
On the right, there's a different relationship between the extremist groups and the Republican Party and the sitting president. Very different.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, and Ed Luse I’ll ask the same question of you, obviously, you wrote about the two assassination attempts against President Trump over the past summer. Explain how that fits into your thesis.
LUSE: Well, what's odd about that is, that Trump isn't more concerned about the danger of bullets in politics. I mean, as I wrote, if Trump had been killed last July, goodness knows what the social breakdown would have been, of course, in itself would have been a tragic crime to kill the nominee of one of America's two parties.
But the backlash to that is just unknowable, which makes it all the more puzzling that, you know, when the department of homeland security and the FBI and American threat assessors for domestic violence have consistently over many years been saying, look, the terrorist threat and lone wolf threat of political assassination and other and other terror events comes from these far right militias. It makes it all the more surprising that Trump's administration is dismantling those units that were set up at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to monitor those groups and try and preempt such violence.
So I don't think there's any allegation, not that Trump's used to it, that he's being consistent here, but he was within a quarter of inch of losing his life. And I think some of the actions he's taken to remove these monitoring groups at federal agencies are making it likely that other, other such tragedies like we saw in Minnesota are going to take place. I mean, that's just a real puzzle. And it shouldn't be happening.
