The Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting Reinforces Trump’s Appeal
Political violence hands demagogues their case.
A note from Garry Kasparov: Celebrate one year of The Next Move and save 30% when you upgrade to join our premium subscriber community—now through the end of April. Premium subscribers get invitations to exclusive Zoom conversations, early access to podcasts, and other benefits!
Upgrade now and don’t miss our next premium subscriber-exclusive call where I’ll be joined by former White House attorney Ty Cobb and RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein—coming up on Friday, May 1 at 12pm ET/9am PT. Click here to register.
Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
If you’re fighting to preserve liberal democracy, the last thing you should do is provide the arsonists with more fuel.
Americans who pick up guns rather than signs, who would rather pull the trigger than pull the lever in the ballot box, accelerate the decline of democratic institutions. They hand a victory to those who say the system is fundamentally broken (not just flawed) and needs to be replaced.
This was true after January 6. It was true after the assassinations of Democratic Minnesota State Legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband. It was true after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
It remains true after this past Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when an attacker barged into the Washington Hilton intending to kill President Trump and top cabinet officials.
Aspiring despots thrive on martyrdom and violence. Every attack is taken as evidence of the supposed degeneracy and lawlessness of “the other side.”
“If they’re willing to die to assassinate,” Elon Musk warned over the weekend on X, invoking the ominous and amorphous them, “imagine what they will do if they gain political power.”
Liberal democracy is always vulnerable to demagogues invoking order. Most people struggle to feel threats to their constitutional rights in their kishkes—their guts—until it is too late. But they can feel order and disorder, or the perception of those things. The words “murder,” “terrorism,” and “riots” are a lot more evocative than the term “liberty.”
Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia at the end of a decade that was genuinely chaotic and bloody. Every abuse he carried out was then excused as a solution to the country’s anarchy.
Ultimately, what people crave is safety and predictability in their daily lives, not the lofty, academic notion of democracy. Democracy is simply the best means of delivering that outcome. As small-d democrats, we can’t afford to lose this argument to people who claim, disingenuously, that security can only be achieved through ceding our rights.
ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser podcast
You might protest: Donald Trump stokes a lot of rage and lawlessness. He does. The data certainly does not absolve the president or his camp; a 2025 study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a leading non-partisan think tank, found that in recent decades, most political violence in America came from the right. The president’s defenders expose an obvious, perhaps deliberate, blind spot when they pretend that the bullets are only flying in one direction.
Still, when it comes to shaping the popular imagination, headline-grabbing anecdotes are far more powerful than statistics. A handful of attempts on the president’s life will resonate far more widely than dozens of attacks on lower-profile targets.
And no American—of any political persuasion—can find comfort in the data, anyway. Yes, the CSIS study showed that the right has led the left on political violence—but! It also showed that left-wing political violence is rising more quickly than attacks from the right. As frustration builds, there’s a growing tolerance for vigilante justice on both sides of the aisle (CEO-killer Luigi Mangione remains a folk hero with millions of adoring fans).
Many of those who don’t excuse the violence simply deny it; the assumption (wanting for evidence) in many hyper-partisan quarters of the Internet is that the Trump administration staged Saturday’s attack.
This is a failure on moral and strategic grounds. Examples abound of democracies in distress being pulled back from the brink through elections or peaceful civil disobedience. Hungarians have provided the most recent model to emulate; despite an uneven playing field, they scored a bloodless win against 16-year incumbent Viktor Orbán. The election was fraught with institutional obstacles and traps laid by Orbán, but a victory earned through votes is a far better outcome than victory through civil war.
Debating political violence in America might feel like an elite indulgence given the nature of the threat we face. Yet this conversation is an urgent one precisely because freedom is under such serious strain here: Democracy is not truly dead until we give up on it as a means to accomplish our goals and resolve our differences.
More from The Next Move:
Charlie Kirk Was Murdered. Political Violence Is Surrender.
The shooting of Charlie Kirk at a Utah college is a tragedy that endangers our democracy.
I Resisted Putin in Russia. Here’s the Right Way to Protest.
Events taking shape in California can be an example for the nation, or they can be the harbinger of a long, hot summer.
These assassins or attempted assassins aren’t usually rational people. Obviously they’re wrong but if they’re mentally disturbed, you can’t reason with them.
I’ve noticed from the comments after this attempted assassination that people are generally concerned with the ready ability of weapons. Reducing this availability would help.
But it seems politically impossible with so many Americans completely opposed to any restrictions.
I agree with you that political violence plays into the hands of autocrats, but would respectfully disagree with your conclusion that "Democracy is not truly dead until we give up on it as a means to accomplish our goals and resolve our differences."
Democracy in America died a long time ago, largely because political violence has defined the United States since its very origins. It is also widely overlooked and disregarded, in the sense that it has grown so pervasive and ubiquitous that Americans can't even seem to recognize it anymore. I wrote a post reflecting on these unfortunate patterns the day after the White House Correspondents Dinner and welcome any thoughts. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/what-did-last-nights-attack-on-the
Keep up the good work!