In a special episode of the New Lines Contours Podcast, host Kelsey Quinn sits down with New Lines Non-Resident Fellows Daryl Johnson and Alejandro Beutel, both specialists on domestic violent extremism. In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the three discuss the political climate in which the attack took place, potential reactions to the shooting, and the importance of political leaders’ rhetoric in modulating extremism.
Kelsey Quinn:
Hello and welcome to the Contours Podcast by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. This is your host, Kelsey Quinn, and today we will be discussing the ramifications of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump in light of our recent intelligence briefings titled U.S. Domestic Political Stability and Security: A Strategic Estimate for 2024 and Beyond. These two intelligence briefings cover the political landscape currently including threats to democratic governance, sociopolitical trends and events, sociopolitical actors and movements and external threats, providing strategic estimates and forecasting for domestic extremism and political violence within the U.S. over the next 12 months. Part two was just released, so please go give it a read at NewLinesInstitute.org. To give a brief overview of today’s events before introducing our two wonderful attendees today, on July 13th, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb just south of Pittsburgh, climbed onto the roof of a building a mere 120 meters away from where former president Donald Trump was giving a speech at a campaign rally. Crooks fired reportedly eight shots, one of which grazed the former president’s right ear.
One crowd member was killed and two others were critically wounded. The shooter was taken down very quickly by the U.S. Secret Service, but not before he was able to commit this violent act. An investigation into the identity and motivations of the shooter was rapidly undertaken, but so far has yielded very minimal results that give any sort of enlightening information about his motivations. He donated $15 to ActBlue, but also was registered and voted as a Republican in 2022. Former classmates and acquaintances describe him as conservative, but nothing that extreme to explain the assassination attempt. While the motivation remains unclear, the impacts of the event have been significant. To discuss the impact of this assassination attempt and the broader threat of political and domestic violence in the US during the run-up to the election and in the months after, we have two wonderful experts today with us.
Daryl Johnson is one of the foremost experts on domestic extremist groups in the U.S. Daryl’s held a number of government positions most recently as senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security. He is currently the founder of DT Analytics, a private consulting firm for law enforcement. He is also the author of two fantastic books, “Hateland: A Long Hard Look at America’s Extremist Heart,” and “Right-Wing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorism Threat is Being Ignored.” Alejandro Beutel specializes in the study of analysis of violent and nonviolent Islamist and far-right movements. Previously he has monitored U.S. far-right extremism and hate, particularly focusing on anti-Muslim and anti-government hatred movements. So these two wonderful experts are here with us today. Alejandro and Daryl, thank you so much.
Alejandro Beutel:
Thank you for having me.
Daryl Johnson:
Thank you.
Kelsey Quinn:
Great. So we’ve got a lot to talk about today, so I think we’ll just jump right in and get this discussion rolling. One of the main things that we’ve immediately seen coming up in the discussion around the assassination attempt, you address pretty significantly in your Intelligence Briefing, and this is conspiracy theories and lack of trust of institutions. So on its surface, the events of the day seem to be a pretty significant failure on part of both the Secret Service and on local law enforcement. As more information has surfaced over the last couple of days, these failures are becoming more apparent and sometimes a little bit shocking. So as a result, lots of grand conspiracy theories are flying around claiming that this was a quote-unquote inside job on the part of the Biden administration. There are even some other conspiracy theories claiming Trump orchestrated the shooting to benefit his own campaign. So in your assessment, how influential will these conspiracy theories be going forward as we look towards the election and a potentially new administration, and what do you believe are really driving these conspiracy theories developing right now?
Daryl Johnson:
So what I think is driving these conspiracy theories is just the extreme polarization that we have in our country right now. So people are strongly divided on various social issues, and so they’re using these conspiracy theories to bolster their positions and they see things through their perception of the world. And so on the far-left, you have people that can’t believe that the government could be that incompetent and that this young assassin was able to pull off almost a successful killing of a presidential candidate.
And so they look at this as being staged or somehow orchestrated by Trump and his associates to try to gain sympathy from swing voters and trying to influence people to vote for him. And then on the opposite side, the Trump supporters, they’re looking at this as a conspiracy by the evil Democrats to kill Trump because they have this narrative that there’s a deep state that’s out to get him and they’re out to ruin his name and even to end his life. And so these conspiracy theories could potentially fuel people on both the far-right and far-left into carrying out acts of violence or even retribution in response to this assassination attempt.
Alejandro Beutel:
And I think to build off of what Daryl was saying, certainly in the short term, what it’s going to do is, politically and socially, is cause those who are already committed to one side or the other politically to circle the wagons and to seek out information that could potentially confirm preexisting biases that they have. And so that’ll deepen preexisting social and ideological polarization that already has taken deep root in our country, which we discuss at length in our report. The other thing I would say is that beyond the elections themselves, because conspiracy theories right now have enjoyed a much greater mainstream currency than they have say compared to 20 years ago, 30 years ago, is that this also continues to potentially erode trust in government in general and in the democratic foundations of our society as well. And so again, I think speaking to Daryl’s point, for instance here, this is going to look at the moment what law enforcement did.
I think that on the left end of the political spectrum, this is also going to instigate, I think even a bit more panic at the moment given that there is a narrative out there that should Donald Trump end up winning the presidency, that it will be the dismantling of democracy altogether and that we’re going to be living in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Whereas on the right, it’s in addition to it being a narrative about a political persecution of Trump, it’s also tied to this other narrative, two other narratives, one of the deep state, that there is sort of this vast insider conspiracy of elites that secretly control the government. And the other being, and we talk about this at length, which is the Stop the Steal narrative. And you’ve seen a proliferation of online memes in the wake of the shooting where they talk about they tried to arrest him, they tried to steal the election from him, and now they’ve tried to kill him, but they can’t do it.
And so I think all of these narratives at the moment are sort of converging in real time in the wake of this incident. And again, it’s going to, I think, energize certain parts of each side of the political spectrum. At the same time, I will just say that one of the most surprising, I would say, countervailing forces to this forecast is that at the moment at least that there have been political leaders on both sides of the aisle, including, to a large extent, Donald Trump himself, who have engaged in restrained rhetoric, urging for calm, condemning the actual violence. And I think that in the interim at least that has had some dampening effects on the passions of political followers on both sides of the spectrum. It remains to be seen, however, how long that those calls for unity and restraint will last and how long people will actually follow up on that and listen to that message.
Kelsey Quinn:
Thank you both. Alejandro, that’s a great point. So I have a follow-up question on that. On the more calm rhetoric that’s coming out of both the Trump camp and the Biden camp to sort of bring down the temperature in the room, how much do you believe that both Biden and Trump, but particularly Trump, are experiencing sort of audience capture where they have to perform for an audience and are now being taken control of by their audience where they have to say things in more and more extreme manners, do you think that Trump and Biden still retain the capability to control their supporters, particularly those that are the loudest simply through calming down and using less extreme rhetoric or do you think that there’s a certain contingent that is sort of unable to be tempered in their extreme beliefs?
Alejandro Beutel:
So I would say that they do have influence over their respective sort of sides that are associated with them. So I do think that that matters. And like I mentioned a moment ago, the fact that Trump is also, has urged restraint and calm has been to some degree a little bit surprising given the nature of his rhetorical style in the past. The way that he has discussed things both as president and as presidential candidate and political figure. At the same time, I can’t discount that part of his restraint at the moment is also a calculated political measure where he’s trying to capitalize upon the outpouring of support and condemnation of the violent event itself. And so I think that as a result of that, there’s been sort of a temporary change of attention away from say, his criminal convictions in New York state court.
And that there’s been diversion away from other things like Project 2025, which people on the left end of the political spectrum have attempted to exploit and frame as a dismantling of democracy to further their narrative of, this is a referendum not on Joseph Biden or even Trump per se, but that it’s a referendum on democracy itself. So I do think that that politics are at play in terms of an audience capture, but that that audience capture itself isn’t necessarily at the moment in favor of a momentum towards the extremes, but rather towards the center. However, like I also mentioned earlier, there are signs already that momentum seems to be waning and that at least in so far as on the right end of the political spectrum, you’ve still heard a lot of very, very heated rhetoric at the RNC. And while much of the rhetoric itself, it has been toned down, at the same time, it is still there. And there is some indications that the calls for common restraint may end up being short-lived.
Daryl Johnson:
To add on to that, some things that I’ve observed on social media is this dynamic of agitating one another on both sides. For example, on TikTok, I’ve seen far-right actors posting content showing far-leftists scoffing at the assassin, how could he have missed? He had the opportunity, he should have taken Trump out. Other people talking about these conspiracies we had just discussed. And so then they posted on their platforms to basically get people on their side to see how the far-left is reacting to this assassination attempt. They don’t have any sympathy, no empathy towards Trump or the situation. And then on the flip side, I’ve seen some postings on X where the far-right is trying to portray the assassin as transgender or any other thing that they perceive as a evil or an enemy. And so again, trying to draw out the anger and the most hatred possible, even if these things aren’t even true, they’re still posting this stuff to try to fan the flames of this hatred.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yeah, I want to dive into that sympathy that’s sort of gathering around, particularly when it comes to far-leftists that are scoffing at or minimizing, making jokes and memes about the assassination attempt. In your report, you categorize political polarization as sort of being either primarily ideological or effective, meaning rooted in social identities and emotions. For those with strong emotional identity-based connection with Donald Trump, the shooting likely strengthened those feelings significantly. That makes sense. However, what can you say about those voters who are less effectively polarized towards Trump? Do you think this event has moved the needle more in his favor? Where does that sort of balance lie now? And do you believe that some not so great posting or jokes that are being made about an event that did result in the death of an unrelated individual at the event, is that actually influencing that connection, that personal connection that people feel towards Donald Trump and the sympathy that they have for his movement?
Daryl Johnson:
So I definitely think this event, the assassination attempt has moved the needle in favor of Trump for those who I guess aren’t entrenched in their positions, people that are more moderate or in the middle. One of the reasons I say this is going back to social media and various memes that I’ve been seeing, a lot of it is cloaked in Christian nationalism. Meaning that God had protected Trump, that Trump is a divine candidate for the position of president. That he’s going to restore our democracy back to the Christian principles that they believe it was founded on, which is false actually. But anyways, a lot of memes showing like God’s hands blessing Trump, all kinds of biblical symbolism like a lion and things like this being shown with Trump scriptures. Like heavenly light shining down on him and things like that. So there’s a lot of Christian nationalism being put onto this event that may, I think, have a strong influence on swaying those of the Christian faith who may have, I guess been Democrats or conservative Democrats to vote for the Republican candidate. Alejandro, do you have anything?
Alejandro Beutel:
Yeah, I think just broadly, again, broadly, I would say that to Daryl’s point is that there is a larger effort right now by people in his camp to try and capitalize on the sort of outpouring of public sympathy that’s there. I think everything right now suggests that the political momentum is in his favor. I mean, he already kind of had that going into the campaign rally two weeks prior with respect to the debate performance that took place between him and Joe Biden. And then on top of it, this incident sort of happened. And so that further capitalized things. And then when he gave that speech at the RNC yesterday, it had sort of an emotional tone and tenor to it at times and surrounded by members of his family.
So I would definitely say that for people who are undecided, people who might be more disengaged but may still intend to vote in the elections, that kind of symbolism and those kinds of tidbits there I think will continue to push the political momentum and perception in his favor because the consensus, at least at the moment, is whether you like the guy or not, no one deserves to be the target of violence. And I think that sort of central consensus point, at least tentative consensus point, given our current political polarized climate, seems to be holding and something that Trump and his camp are seeking to capitalize at this moment. And that’s where you get a whole bunch of other things like these memes that are coming out, a lot of the rhetoric that’s taking place from his campaign and from his supporters and things like that so, yeah.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yeah, thank you both. Daryl, I especially like that you brought up the Christian nationalism aspect of it because I’ve certainly been seeing that myself as well. Where people look at the sheer impossibility of Donald Trump having turned his head in just the right way at just the right moment to avoid a fatal shot. Do you believe that the Christian nationalism supporters or movement will be able to utilize the sort of impossibility of Trump coming out basically unscathed to make any tangible progress with promoting their views and their goals?
Daryl Johnson:
Absolutely. Like I said, Christianity spans the entire political spectrum. And so we’re not just talking about a particular segment of the political spectrum, it’s the entire political spectrum. And so people who may have doubted or maybe they were on the fence or like Alejandro said, undecided, I think this event and the fact that he was able to literally dodge a bullet will resonate with a lot of people in the Christian movement that divine intervention was at hand, that Trump is protected by God, these types of notions. So I absolutely think that it’ll have impact on swelling the base of support for him from people that were fence sitters or undecided or maybe even didn’t like him at one point. Now they’re more sympathetic towards him.
Alejandro Beutel:
Yeah, and just to build off of, that’s a great point Daryl, and just to build off of that as well, I think that when it comes time for the actual elections themselves, I would expect that this will be a high turnout, a very, very high turnout among the Christian nationalist segment of his base. And to Daryl’s point as well about sort of Christianity itself and religion more broadly being a huge influence in American civic life and political life, I would also say that this will be an opportunity to really mobilize people to get out to vote.
And also though, even for people who may be less religiously observant but would regard themselves as culturally Christian, this will I think sort of further deepen their narratives and their perspectives and support for Donald Trump using religious appeals that even if it may not have a strong theological basis for them, will still have a strong cultural and social appeal for them as a basis of identity formation as opposed to something theologically and ideologically based. The other thing I’ll just quickly mention as well is that because of the nature of how I mentioned before, the different entanglement of conspiracy theories converging together in this one central event here, like Stop the Steal and the deep state.
I’ll also say again that for many Christian nationalists as well, this is also I think again going to set up an opportunity for opinion shapers on the right to, in the event that Trump somehow manages to lose this election, which all things right now are pointing towards him having a very good chance at winning it, but if he somehow manages to lose this election, that this will also then further set things up for a strengthening of the conspiracy theories and narratives related to election denialism and that, oh, they were trying to steal things away from him and that it almost grants Trump this prophet-like status of a figure who’s being religiously persecuted to the extent almost of violence. And the only way to prevent him then from restoring an almost biblically-informed government in the White House is to once again engage in mass electoral fraud. So I see that also being a potential setup along the way among Christian nationalists. Daryl, do you have anything to add on that as well?
Daryl Johnson:
Yeah, so one other interesting observation that I’ve had is how some of these, I guess hot-button Christian issues such as LGBTQ+ as well as roles of men and women in the workforce, things like that, there’ve been a lot of extremists and far-right chatter about how diversity, equity and inclusion policies were at full display during this assassination attempt. And they point to the women special agents responding to the assassination and how one of them was too short and exposed Trump’s head and torso to a potential second shot and how that woman should not be a Secret Service agent and be out there protecting the president.
They’re also pointing the finger at the female Secret Service director saying that she was basically promoted into that position because of these diversity, equality and inclusion policies. And again, I had mentioned the fact that there’s these rumors going around that the shooter was transgender. So there’s actually these Christian nationalist themes that are being applied to the situation more broadly as well. So it’s not just focusing on divine intervention and how Trump was protected by God, but also how these policies that they’re against were on full display and led to some of the incompetence and things that led up to this assassination attempt.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yeah, that’s a great point. I think this assassination attempt is the perfect convergence of all these different factors feeding into this strange political landscape that we find ourselves in. Even just, I’ve seen quite along the same lines of things with the director of the Secret Service and what has now become almost a meme, the photo of that Secret Service woman agent. So moving a little bit into democratic institutions, I think this is a good time to pivot and talk about those things that can be done for our institutions.
It seems like on both the far-left and far-right, there’s some distrust in our institutions, particularly the federal agencies and law enforcement, although this is present in the far-left in its own capacity, the far-right are particularly distrustful of the FBI and the DOJ. The entities that are going to be doing the investigation into this assassination attempt and likely to be involved in any further political or domestic violence that’s happening and would also be responsible for investigations later on down the line when we get to the election time. How we’ve been seeing the distrust of these federal agencies, like the FBI amongst our individuals, play out within the discourse around the assassination attempt.
Right now, the investigation is kind of finding that he’s a bit of a boring individual almost. All the expectations of him being far-left or far-right are kind of not playing out with the information that we have at hand right now. So should that trend continue to happen and nothing extraordinary comes out, do you believe that any conclusions made from the investigation will be impactful or is that going to be discounted and just be roped up into the broader grand conspiracy of the deep state, and there’s nothing really that can be done on the part of the FBI, the DOJ or other investigative authorities to have the actual facts of the investigation change some of the narratives around the assassination attempt?
Daryl Johnson:
So basically for mainstream America, I think the investigation and the conclusions that are reached will help, I guess, answer some of the questions and criticisms. But when you’re talking about extremists, they look at the world through an entirely different lens and they are entrenched into their positions and they will only find facts that support those positions. So no matter how thorough, how truthful the information is, they will dismiss it, they will spin it to fit their perceptions and their conspiracies. So I don’t think when you’re talking about the extremes on both sides, that the investigation will do anything to cause them to become more enlightened or have understanding as to what happened. They’ve got their narratives, they’ve got their theories and their conspiracies, and they’re just going to look for things that reinforce that notion rather than look at other sources of information that may have the truth.
Alejandro Beutel:
Yeah, and I think, to build off of Daryl’s point, at this point, for people who already are set in their political views, this is, depending on what the results of the investigation are going to be, that this will essentially either confirm preexisting biases that they have, confirmation bias or that they’ll dismiss it and find fault with the findings themselves. And certainly I think that, again, for a lot of people on the right where the distrust of federal law enforcement has been high as of late, this is something that I think is going to be something that they may end up latching onto depending on what the results are going to be.
But again, even similarly, on the left as well, when we learned, for example, that just prior to the shooting where there was a local law enforcement officer who found the shooter on top of the roof of the building, which by the way is where several law enforcement officers were stationed in order to manage the security situation around the rally itself, that officer had withdrawn temporarily when the shooter pointed the rifle at him. And so that also, again, I think is going to continue to fuel quite a bit of distrust and discontent with local law enforcement in particular because from what I understand, that particular part of the assassination attempt there involved a local law enforcement officer who had retreated instead of engaging the shooter right then and there. And so again, everyone on their side of the political aisle is going to find something that they’re going to latch on to. And at this point, the facts are going to fit around pre-existing narratives that are already there, rather than the facts shaping what those narratives could be in the end.
Daryl Johnson:
Yeah, and again, particularly the far-right extremists are blaming these policies that are in place for, I guess police to engage a subject. They point to the fact that it took the sniper on the Secret Service to have to wait for the shooter to actually fire his rifle in order to retaliate and respond and take the shooter out. They point to these diversity, equality and inclusion policies as well as these political correctness that point to these law enforcement hesitations to engage when they should have engaged the subject much sooner. So again, you see kind of this, they’re looking at it through their perception and trying to spin it to fit their positions and their causes rather than look at the situation in its totality and realize that a lot of times someone’s point of view may be blocked from having to take that lethal shot. The law enforcement officer who encountered the shooter on the roof had to take cover because he feared for his own life. So anyways, there’s a lot of interesting ways these extremists perceive things and put their own spin on things.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yeah, we can definitely see that in a number of ways how they’re applying their own particular talking points or things that they feel the most strongly about directly to this assassination attempt. So in the part two of your analysis, which again was just posted today, please go give it a read, you guys claim that should Donald Trump return to the presidency, he will likely attempt to maximize his executive power by further eroding the democratic norms and institutions that we have. Now, because so many different existing policies and trends are being brought into an assassination attempt all at once, these DEI policies, how law enforcement engages as you just spoke of, do you believe this event will be used and weaponized by Trump and his administration should he win the next election to make even more dramatic action to seize executive power or spur some sort of politically motivated criminal investigations that further erode our liberal democratic norms? How much of a really powerful weapon do you think this is going to be and where do you think it’s most likely to be pointed towards?
Alejandro Beutel:
I would not put it outside the realm of possibility for Donald Trump should he be the victor in the 2024 election to do exactly that. There have been previous criticisms when he was in office under his administration. That he was already engaging in politically motivated and biased investigations. Focusing on say the far-left and talking quite a bit about that, the violent far-left as well as the non-violent far-left at the cost of not investigating and looking more into the far-right, especially in light of a number of different studies, including data from the Department of Homeland Security and FBI that pointed to the far-right actually being the bigger domestic violent extremist threat in terms of number of fatalities, casualties, severity of impact of violence. So I wouldn’t put it past him to do that. Also in part though, because even, again, prior to this event, Donald Trump’s rhetoric though has consistently indicated, has consistently pointed to a desire for engaging in politically motivated investigations and essentially trying to crack down on his political adversaries that are there.
And this is prior to the, again, all of it prior to the assassination attempt. This has been a repeated part of his rhetoric. And so between past behavior and past rhetoric, I would then say that there’s nothing in my estimation that would change him from doing exactly, exactly that. He has every incentive to want to try and do that. He’s made that an explicit part of his campaign rhetoric, and I don’t see any really countervailing disincentives for him to try and do otherwise. If there was going to be anything that would prevent him from doing so, it would be any sort of political backlash that might deter him from doing that. But that wouldn’t necessarily reduce his intent, it would just reduce his capability of attempting to do those kinds of things.
And at this juncture, I think one of the, looking back retrospectively on why he was only able to pursue some of those kinds of things in a limited fashion was because of his struggles with trying to engage in governance competently. He was often governing by chaos. But this time around, when we look at the actors who are supporting him, Trumpism, the MAGA movement itself, and the policy choices and positions that they’ve taken are much more organized, much more systematic, much more coherent than they were, say, vis-a-vis his first term. And so I would anticipate that should he be elected to office, he and his supporters will be hitting the ground running as quickly as possible, and this would be one of those issues that he would probably be going into very, very quickly.
Daryl Johnson:
So I agree 100% with Alejandro’s assessment, but I’ll be a little more bold. In light of this shooting, the person that was the target has, I guess, two primary ways to react. They could either self-reflect on all of the past heated rhetoric and polarization and everything that was caused by the political narratives that were put forth during the campaigning as well as the administration, but also they could react with anger. And so you ever heard that adage that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior? I think it applies very clearly to this case. When Donald Trump was hit by that bullet and grazed, he fell to the ground and was covered with all these Secret Service agents. But when he arose, he didn’t walk off the stage as directed by the Secret Service protectees.
He didn’t seek a defensive position or seek cover. He stood up with a raised fist and yelled the words, fight, fight, fight. And so that to me is a clear indication as to what he intends to do in light of this incident, and that is double down on these hard-line policies, retaliate against his enemies if elected, continue to put forth these policies that are very divisive and harsh, particularly towards minority groups and Democrats in the left. So I don’t see him in any way dialing back or self-reflecting on what got him to that point, and he’s just going to use this assassination to his advantage, this assassination attempt.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yeah, that’s a great point. That one video that I’m sure we’re all thinking of was the greatest gift that could have been given to Donald Trump’s campaign. It is a very powerful photo. So the next thing I’d like to talk about briefly is the potential for future assassination attempts or violence targeted towards other public officials following the shooting, Secret Service and other forms of security details have been increased for many high profile individuals. Donald Trump, obviously, RFK Jr. received Secret Service protection after asking for it for quite a while, and I presume the Biden Secret Service entourage has been increased as well.
So increased physical protection would generally deter additional attempts to target those who have this enhanced security. However, the attempt has put many on edge and kind of raised the potential for maybe retaliatory violence in some capacity. Should we anticipate increased violent incidents or threats against public officials, especially those that you speak about in your report of lower level public officials who these people don’t have a security detail, they’re just normal people getting in their car and driving to work. Should we be concerned about the safety and security of these public officials?
Daryl Johnson:
Yeah, definitely. The FBI and DHS issued an intelligence bulletin warning of this very fact. Warning of potential retaliatory attacks or further assassination attempts given what happened. Some interesting data that I shared with Alejandro yesterday came from a watchdog group called Moonshot. And we were already in a heightened threat environment as well as threats towards legislators, politicians, even people that volunteer, voting, polling stations, things like this, they’ve been monitoring extremist chatter since the assassination attempt on Saturday, and there was a 100% increase in threats and encouragement to violence. There was a 455% increase in threats of violence towards politicians, specifically. And 633% increase in calls for a civil war.
So I think those numbers speak to this heightened threat environment that we’re operating in. As far as the far-right, I think there are those on the far-right right now that are contemplating and thinking about retaliatory attacks against Democratic politicians. There’s also people on the far left that I think are desperate because they don’t have full faith in the Democratic nominee. Plus, they are very fearful of Donald Trump and his past policies as well as what’s been published in the media as far as what his agenda would be if re-elected. And so you could see people on the far-left even mobilizing towards maybe taking a second assassination attempt of Trump and trying to follow through and succeed on it. So we are in this very dangerous time.
And even when the election happens, I don’t think it’s going to go away at all. It’s going to continue. We mentioned in our first report that if Trump’s elected, both far-right and far-left violence are expected to rise. One in response to the other, and one because they feel it’s a permissive environment to operate in. And then of course, if the Democratic candidate wins, we may see the far-left kind of level off, but again, they’re still fearful of the rising far-right threat, which will thrive again under a Democratic administration. So you may even see the far-left even continue to mobilize and strengthen. So those are my thoughts.
Alejandro Beutel:
I don’t have too much to add, I think, because Daryl did an excellent summation of things there. I would say just briefly, that in terms of what the DHS bulletin had put out, we had also mentioned that in our report as well, that for elected officials and others who work at local, state and federal levels, that this assassination does come in a wider context of threats, harassment, and attempted violence against other elected officials. A lot of people will think about what’s happened in terms of threats to say, when Robert DePape, far-right extremist had entered the home of Nancy Pelosi, or how there was a far-left attempted assassination against Chief Justice John Roberts.
Daryl Johnson:
That was Brett Kavanaugh, right? Not John Roberts.
Alejandro Beutel:
That’s correct, I’m sorry. Thank you, thank you for correcting me, Daryl, yes. Or the attempted mass shooting against Republican members of Congress in 2017, and of course, January 6th, right? So the list goes on and on and on. And that’s just at the federal level. There’s been numerous cases that have happened at the local and state level where even though it’s been given comparatively less attention, that there’s just as much, if not even more threats and threats of violence and harassment taking place there. And so whereas at the federal level, a lot of the elected officials and government officials will enjoy or not enjoy, but they have the benefit of more physical security, especially in and around buildings, or if they’re high ranking officials enough, then they have protective details. But even for many members of Congress, and especially also for a lot of elected officials at state and local levels, they don’t have necessarily security details.
A lot of these legislative facilities themselves are also, they don’t have the same level of protection that federal facilities and buildings would have. Many times in some state legislatures, they even allow people to carry firearms onto the premises. And so we assessed actually in our report that state legislatures in swing states, but also state legislatures that allow firearms onto their premises are actually at some of the greatest risks of political violence. And that risk, I think right now in my assessment would be even more elevated given the recent attempted assassination against Donald Trump. And so it’s not just a function of the vulnerability of these facilities, but also their attractiveness as a symbolic target that’s there. The only other thing I’ll mention, because Daryl had pointed out to the Moonshot data. One of the other things to mention is that, yes, there’s been a significant escalation of threats and violent rhetoric that needs to be taken note of.
What they also mentioned, interestingly enough, is that the FBI, and this is a quote directly from their social media post on this, the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago prompted an online response approximately five times more violent and hostile than the attempted assassination. So even the actual act of violence though, did not prompt as nearly significant of a response as the Mar-a-Lago raid did, where Trump wasn’t even physically present when it happened. And what I want to point out here again is that while there may be many factors involving the differences in response, I think one of the key things to keep in mind as well though, is the rhetoric from public officials in the wake of the actual violent incident that took place where again, there was this consensus point that there needs to be a, tone down the rhetoric, that violence is unacceptable, and that we need to be unified as a country.
Whereas during the Mar-a-Lago raid, on the other hand, there was a lot of partisan rhetoric and there was a lot of escalation from the words of Donald Trump himself as well as many of his supporters. And I think that is a very, very important difference. And it speaks to the salience of political leadership as well. That that is going to be a key factor moving forward that will help influence levels of risk of political violence in this country in the run-up to the 2024 elections, and shortly thereafter. I did want to just briefly mention one thing.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yes, sir.
Alejandro Beutel:
Which is that looking at this attempted assassination, something that we did discuss in part two of our report is looking at emerging technologies and technological innovation. And one of the things that we did discuss are UASs, uncrewed aerial systems. And in many other parts of the world, drones are increasingly being used for terrorist attacks and political assassinations. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in the DVE space, the domestic violence extremist space, that there are people who won’t be studying this incident looking at lessons learned and saying, well, maybe we ought to be using drones in the future as well to try and carry out this kind of attack, vis-a-vis, say, foreign actors such as violent Islamist extremists such as the Houthis in Yemen or the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaeda and Hamas, like groups like that, or Hezbollah, they have been extensively using weaponized forms of commercial drone technology for a very, very long time, in no small part thanks to the assistance of say, foreign actors like Iran. Whereas domestically, the far-left and the far-right, they really don’t have much in terms of state support.
But nevertheless, it is something that, I think that they are increasingly looking at. On the far-right, for example, they have been studying drones, and in the conflict theater in Ukraine, many far-rightists have been embedded within either Russian or Ukrainian forces have actually used weaponized drones. And so it would be, I think, important to think about in a longer term forecast that we may end up seeing over the horizon, maybe not, maybe or maybe not over the next 12 months. But I would definitely say, I would have much greater confidence thereafter. That we could expect to see attempted assassinations using weaponized drone technology in the future here in our domestic environment as well, especially in light of this particular incident.
Kelsey Quinn:
Great. Thank you, Alejandro. Yeah, everyone sort of expects foreign actors to be manipulating the information space in some capacity, but I think it’s a really great point that you brought up that not only does this event offer some impact on the information space by foreign actors, but tangibly outside of the U.S. borders, we could be seeing changes in the technology that’s being used and using this particular event and the real details of the day of to be utilized in other perhaps avenues and in different realms, in different regions. But then also using this domestically as kind of a way to learn about the weaknesses of our current political landscape and the security that’s provided to our public officials. So we’ll sum this up with one last question for the both of you. Given these events, are there any of these forecasts that you made in your fantastic intelligence briefings that you believe are very salient at this particular juncture or that you want to highlight as we go forward over these next 12 months?
Daryl Johnson:
So just to kind of summarize, there’s been a lot of focus on the far-right threat over the past 10 to 12 years. We also need to be focused on the rising far-left threat as they get increasingly organized and radicalized and mobilizing. So this is a very delicate balance and complicated threat environment that law enforcement has to kind of balance between international terrorist threats, homegrown via extremism linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda, but also the far right and far left threats. And so it’s a very and growing threat environment that is very taxing on law enforcement resources and the energy of the intelligence and law enforcement communities as a whole. And so, Alejandro and I will continue to follow and monitor and analyze and inform people as we see the threat dynamics change.
And it’s just important for people to be vigilant. If you see something, say something, report any suspicious activities to law enforcement, and also play a role in trying to de-escalate any extremist or conspiracy theorists you have in your family, in your neighborhood, in your work environment. And like I said, look for these changes in behavior in particular, if someone’s growing increasingly violent and going out and stockpiling weapons and tinkering with explosives or talking about more violent things. We’re looking for increases in their normal behavior or some radical change in their behavior. So it’s a very important time for all of us. And be careful as you go to the polling stations and as you cast your vote, just know that it has a lot of meaning for the future of the country.
Alejandro Beutel:
Yeah, and I think to build off of that, and I think this is an extension of what was in the forecast that’s there, I think one of the implications of what we had forecasted, especially in light of the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump’s life, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record here, but it cannot be emphasized enough, is the importance of political leadership. The importance of measured rhetoric on the part of our political and civic leaders across this country. And I’m glad to hear, this is where I’m sort of taking off the analyst hat here for a moment and just very briefly editorializing, is that I’m glad to hear that there was a consensus point that emerged condemning political violence in this country in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump. And putting back my analyst hat on, that is because I think it shows then that this could have escalated very, very quickly and could have devolved very, very quickly.
Now it’s true, I think that Daryl is correct to point out that there are actors right now who could still be in the middle of planning things at the moment. At the same time, maybe one also other interpretation is that while there are people who are planning, there are also people who have decided not to act and literally not just figuratively shoot from the hip and engage in street brawls and violence and just start going out on the street and shooting people. And that I think analytically is, that could have been a potential outcome from this. And I think right now that seems to have been at least temporarily averted. And consistent with what Daryl just said a moment ago, we need to maintain vigilance. We do. And part of that vigilance is making sure that if we see something, we say something as well as also I think intervening here to really fight for civility in our public discourse and even in our public policies as well.
That’s just such an important thing here. There’s nothing wrong with passion. There’s nothing wrong with rigorous debate and disagreement. That is essential to the functioning of any democracy. But there does come a point in time where we also have to say though that even if there is a legal right to some of the most passionate speech, we have to draw a line at things like harassment and threats and acts of violence. And even that under our very high First Amendment standards for protection of speech and assembly, that though isn’t something that is never ever going to be allowed under our constitutional order. And that is something, that that is a standard that we must rigorously, rigorously hold by as well as utilizing the marketplace of ideas to make sure that we hold our political and civic leaders accountable for any rhetoric that even moves in that kind of direction. Because as we’ve seen with this latest event, the consequences can be potentially devastating.
Kelsey Quinn:
Yes, I absolutely agree. This point in time in American history is one where we have to tread very carefully and intentionally and we will all be watching very, very closely over the next coming months and at least for the next year. So today we’ll wrap that up here. I’d like to conclude by thanking the both of you, Alejandro, thank you, Daryl, thank you very much. Obviously there’s a lot that can be discussed here and I think we’ll all be talking about it plenty going forward. And I encourage everyone absolutely to please go to NewLinesInstitute.org and read Daryl and Alejandro’s fantastic intelligence briefing. There is part one and part two posted on the website now. Please go and read it. They do fantastic work, really dissecting each of the different aspects of the political polarization and threat of domestic and extremist violence in the United States. So please give it a read. It is perfectly, perfectly relevant to the moments of today. So once again, thank you both very much and everyone take care.
Alejandro Beutel:
Daryl, always a pleasure working with you. Kelsey, pleasure talking to you.
Daryl Johnson:
Thank you very much.