Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" drew a through line between President Donald Trump's entry into politics and the shootings of two Minnesota state legislators.
An apparent Trump supporter assassinated a Democratic lawmaker and her husband and wounded another and his wife, and national affairs analyst John Heilemann said things had changed in the 10 years since the former reality TV star announced his candidacy for president.
"You know, I'm not going to say that Donald Trump personally is responsible for all of this," Heilemann said, "but the Trump era in our politics, starting in 2015, 2016, that [statistic] that [Sen.] Amy [Klobuchar] said [earlier] on the show where you talked about having 1,700 threats against elected officials in 2016 and now you're up to 9,000 a year, that is a marked and pretty definable uptick in a particular period in our politics where I think it's fair to say that the ideological polarization, the severity of the rhetoric and the us-versus-them framing of red-and-blue MAGA and non-MAGA has driven a lot of, I would say, in tandem with the pervasiveness of social media and social media as a platform for spreading misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.
"That has been a toxic brew in this last decade, and, you know, the [Sen.] Mike Lee thing is striking for sure," Heilemann added, referring to statement from the Utah Republican blaming the left for the killings.
"The fact that Mike Lee now, I believe, still on on X calls himself now, instead of Sen. Mike Lee, calls himself 'based' Mike Lee, which is a kind of term of art for someone who's fully in the camp of MAGA, is indicative of something, but it's indicative this, this change flows from the top."
Heilemann again stopped short of blaming the president directly for political violence, but he said Trump created a permission structure for extremism to flourish.
"I don't blame Donald Trump personally for all of this, but Donald Trump is the one who made Paul Pelosi a punchline in his speeches for a period of time after the attack on Paul Pelosi," Heilemann said. "This tone has been set from the president as a candidate and in the Oval Office in certain cases, and, I think that, you know, the leadership on this has to come from both sides, leaders, the Democratic Party, leaders of the Republican Party. But ultimately, if the president of the United States is driving that kind of fueling, the kind of us-versus-them rhetorical frame for our politics."
"It's going to be very hard," he added, "you know, to ever turn the turn the heat, to turn the temperature down and get us back in a place where political violence and threats of political violence aren't routine in our politics. It's got to come from the very top."
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