These GOP fire eaters are preparing their supporters for war

In the decade before the Civil War, slave-owning men known as “Fire Eaters” started ratcheting up public discourse in stark, divisive, all or nothing terms. They cast their interests not as political differences, but as an existential crisis facing the nation. They used public speeches to vilify people who disagreed with them, spreading hatred in the hearts of men until it grew hot, and war became inevitable.

It’s impossible to read the words of those men without hearing the voices of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller speaking at Charlie Kirk’s memorial.

Using that solemn occasion to deliver a message of hatred and division, two weeks after Kirk’s murder, Trump and Miller are still exploiting it. Despite the lack of clarity about both the killer’s motive and his shifting political ideologies, they continue to spread false rhetoric blaming the “radical left,” projecting their own wish for political violence just as the Fire Eaters of the 19th century did.

Words of war

Anyone who expected a respite, or dared to hope for a “presidential” message during Kirk’s memorial service, was sorely disappointed. After a MAGA speaker lineup, Trump walked onto the stage while Lee Greenwood sang “Proud to be an American,” also known as “God Bless the U.S.A.” In Trump's heavily choreographed entrance, raucous applause erupted as live fireworks exploded across a stage more reminiscent of a used car clearance event than a somber memorial.

After Kirk’s grieving widow spoke of forgiveness and grace, Trump batted her words away. Trump relayed to the audience how Kirk said he didn’t hate people who disagreed with him.

“But,” Trump said, “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

Miller, the presumed architect behind Trump’s attacks on immigrants and minorities, delivered his own ghoulish invective, eulogizing Kirk with dark images of us vs. them:

“The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

Miller didn’t define who he meant by “we” and “they.” He didn’t need to.

Right v left

Trump and Miller are getting their wish: Political violence in the US is on the rise. Violent attacks against US government personnel and facilities more than doubled between 2024 and 2025. Contrary to what Trump and Miller keep claiming, however, it’s coming from the right, not the left.

Analyzing political violence according to the views of the perpetrator is complicated in part because interpreting motive can itself be subjective. It’s also complicated because different organizations use different terminology. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as violence “intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes,” while researchers, including universities, use more operational definitions.

Despite these challenges, data clearly show that right-wing political violence has been far, far deadlier than left-wing political violence.

Based ongovernment and independent analyses, PBS reports that right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities in the US, listing recent examples such as the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the Pittsburgh 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack, and the anti-immigrant 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre. The report also lists deaths caused by left-wing extremist incidents, including anarchist and environmental movements like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, arson and vandalism campaigns that often targeted property rather than people.

When compared side by side, violence from right wing extremism amounted to approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths between 2001 and the present, while violence from the left comprised about 10 percent to 15 percent of such incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities overall from political violence.

Violent words elicit violent responses

Mark Hertling writes in his excellent essay “Beware today’s fire eaters” that the 1861 onset of Civil War can be attributed to political arsonists who portrayed compromise and coexistence as dishonor, promoting national violence as the only resort.

Hertling, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, writes that the Civil War agitators “moved beyond grievance into agitation and violence. They … treated any dissent as an existential threat to their way of life. They cultivated a rhetoric that was designed not to persuade opponents but to radicalize their many followers,” ultimately celebrating political violence as necessary.

The tactics of the fire-eaters, Herling notes, reveal the same playbook we are witnessing today as Trump radicalizes his base by demonizing and dehumanizing his political opponents.

Fire Eaters of the Civil War, like Trump and Miller, painted their political adversaries as mortal enemies. As Trump has demonstrated repeatedly with Executive Orders that have no basis in law, the Fire Eaters also normalized extralegal responses. They claimed political violence was a patriotic duty, just as Trump exalted J6 rioters to fight like hell or they wouldn’t have a country left, then rewarded even the worst among them with a pardon.

As Trump, Miller, Hegseth and Bondi build the world’s largest and most lethal police state, they are equipping Trump with his own private militia. As Trump teases a third presidential run, it’s not hard to see that, for him, January 6 was but a rehearsal.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.