The Patriot Post® · The Endemic Threat of the Leftist Hate Machine
“To restore … harmony … to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot.” —Thomas Jefferson (1801)
You already know the epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome is raging.
But the manifestations of mental decompensation associated with unbridled hatred for Donald Trump and the cadre of disruptors he onboarded since defeating the feckless duo of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have become exponentially more disturbing — and dangerous.
Recently, I sat at a table between four friends. The couple to my left, who loathe Trump, dropped some political bombs on the conversation, baiting the Trump-supporting couple on my right, who unfortunately took the bait.
I did my best to find some common ground with both couples. With those on my right, we agreed with Trump’s considerable domestic and foreign policy achievements. With those on my left, who like many Democrats are triggered by Trump’s communication “style,” I also found common ground.
Since the first months of Trump’s first term, I have objected to the disunity he creates with antagonizing comments and social media posts. Those have repeatedly proven to be unforced errors — when his New York bravado gets picked up by Leftmedia platforms, it can completely eclipse his agenda. Such was the case with his post earlier this month, trolling leftists by depicting himself as the Messiah, when the attention needed to be explaining the escalating war with Iran to the American people.
Common ground on Trump’s trolls settled things down for a minute, but endeavoring a lasting degree of detente at this table was a bridge too far.
So, what causes political disagreement to degrade into personal hatred that can fracture relationships?
In a column last year on the roots of the rising tide of hatred, “Leftists Who Hate Trump … Hate Grassroots Americans,” I referenced a Wall Street Journal analysis by David Gelernter.
Gelernter, a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and currently a professor at Yale, offered insights on the leftist disconnect with grassroots America that are instructive to the question of broken relationships.
He observed, “What the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America.”
He summarized why Demos feared Trump: “He has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American.”
Gelernter concluded: “Mr. Trump reminds us who the average American really is. … This all leads to an important question — one that will be dismissed indignantly today, but not by historians in the long run: Is it possible to hate Donald Trump but not the average American?”
The leftist hate machine has infused tens of millions of otherwise reasonable Americans with visceral hatred for Donald Trump, and many have internalized that to the point they also hate those “bitter, deplorable, racist, misogynist, fascist, garbage” people who support him.
And that hatred reflects a shift in political rhetoric.
As a direct result of Democrat hate rhetoric over the last decade, we have witnessed a resurgence of political violence emerging mostly in urban protests as we saw in the Demos’ 2020 “Summer of Rage.” They successfully fomented so much anger against Trump that a mentally incapacitated candidate, Joe Biden, was able to defeat Trump in his reelection bid.
That virulent anger/hate model became the template for Demo hate hustlers and their Leftmedia propagandists. And the consequence is a corresponding rise of political violence by pathologically deranged individuals, almost all of whom are the product of leftist indoctrination.
This week, the Demo culture of violence reared its ugly head again, with now a third attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, amid other foiled assassination plots against Trump. It won’t be the last.
Frankly, it’s astounding that, in a nation of 340 million people in a culture whose Leftmedia and social media rhetoric has energized so much hate, the incidence of violence is not greater.
Over the last 160 years, there have been four assassinations of U.S. presidents: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963. There were assassination attempts against Andrew Jackson, two against Lincoln before his murder, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and now Donald Trump. The fact that the latest attempts have all been against Republicans is telling.
The latest attempt against Trump was during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (irony noted) at the Washington Hilton, the same location of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The threat against presidents and dignitaries at unsecure public venues was one reason why Trump launched the construction of the privately funded $400 million White House ballroom, now being held up by a district court injunction. As Trump declared the day after the attempt on his life, “What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, has been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE.”
As for the leftist rhetoric inciting the most recent attack, it occurred just days after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared out loud what Demos have been fomenting over the last decade: “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
Scott McKay at The Spectator writes, “Now we know what ‘maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time’ means.”
Predictably, Jeffries doubled down, protesting, “The notion that any of us are concerned with so-called ‘criticism’ from these phony Republicans as it relates to anything that has been said, certainly as it relates to the comment related to maximum warfare everywhere all the time… I stand by it. You can continue to criticize me for it. I don’t give a damn about your criticism.”
Responding to Jeffries and other Democrats advocating violence, Victor Davis Hanson notes, “You’ve lowered the bar for every nut in America to take a shot at a president.”
CNN commentator Scott Jennings added, “Conservatives are … rightfully on edge because this keeps happening over and over and over again, and people keep calling Donald Trump a Nazi, and they keep calling him a fascist, and they keep repeating lies about him.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The left-wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend.”
News analyst Ben Whedon compiled a list of the Left’s political acts of violence over the last decade, including the 2017 congressional baseball game attack, the 2022 assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the 2024 assassination of Brian Thompson, the 2024 first attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 2024 second attempt against Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, the 2025 antifa attack on an ICE facility, and the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk.
As our Douglas Andrews concluded, “There’s nothing even remotely resembling such a list on the Right.”
In “The Ideological Roots of Leftist Political Violence,” Daily Signal editor Tyler O'Neil notes, “The Left has weaponized a culture of grievance to paint its opponents as oppressors.”
That was clearly evident in the so-called “manifesto” of the latest Trump assailant, which, as VDH observed, “Reads like a legacy media transcript.”
Law professor Jonathan Turley writes in “The Chilling Embrace of Political Violence”:
The New York Times recently ran a podcast in which radical Hasan Piker, the New York Times Opinion Culture Editor Nadja Spiegelman, and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino captured the moral relativism that has taken hold of the left in American society. They cheerfully described the rationale for everything from “microlooting” to murder. … The sad fact is that violent rhetoric works in an age of rage. Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger called upon her supporters to “Let your rage fuel you.” She then refused to withdraw her support for the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Jay Jones, who once expressed his desire to kill his political opponents and his children. It is the combination of this rising moral relativism with the failing faith in our system that represents an existential threat to our Republic.
Political analyst John Daniel Davidson concludes: “Left-wing political violence won’t end unless it’s actively stopped. We are not going to argue our way to peace.”
Fortunately, there is recent empirical evidence that not all Demo voters are as crazy as their party leaders. But it only takes a few to change the course of history.
Finally, rest easy! The erudite Rep. Jasmine “The Clown” Crockett (D-TX) concludes that Trump staged the event to generate public support: “Has there ever been a president have this many close ‘attempts’ on their life? Maybe it’s lax gun laws, maybe it’s lack of mental health funding, or maybe it’s fake … who knows.”
“Who knows”? White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Anyone who thinks President Trump staged his own assassination attempts is a complete moron.”
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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