NPR’s Kurtzleben: Trump Assassination Attempt Can Have ‘Terrifying Knock-On Effects’ Like People Getting Mad at Media

On Monday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” NPR Political Correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben said that “we have weeks until Election Day, and violence can have terrifying knock-on effects.” And cited as an example, “after the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, the crowd briefly turned on the press and yelled that the shooting was journalists’ fault. It was very tense and very frightening for a short while there.”

Co-host Steve Inskeep asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:00] “Well, now, police have a suspect in custody, as we heard from Greg Allen. He has his own political views, apparently, as expressed over the years on social media. I should note, these kinds of attacks are most commonly traced to individuals who act out of their own, often very strange or inexplicable motives, but what, if anything, does this incident say about American politics generally?”

Kurtzleben responded, “Well, unsurprisingly, I’m going to say it doesn’t say anything good. But, to expound, there was a clip you played earlier where the Secret Service spokesman yesterday said, we live in dangerous times. And, yeah, that’s the blatant truth. Consider that another major storyline right now is that Trump and his running mate’s hateful rhetoric towards immigrants in Springfield, Ohio was followed by bomb threats in schools there. And we’ve seen this kind of disturbing incident growing for years, especially since Trump came to power or even got into politics. There was January 6. There was the attack on Paul Pelosi, former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband. There have been threats to election workers.”

She concluded, “I just keep thinking about, after the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, the crowd briefly turned on the press and yelled that the shooting was journalists’ fault. It was very tense and very frightening for a short while there. My point is that we have weeks until Election Day, and violence can have terrifying knock-on effects.”

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