Donald Trump and other right-wing political figures are trafficking in rhetoric that fuels the potential for political violence, a national security analyst said Wednesday.
Juliette Kayyem during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” called on political leaders to tone down their bombast.
Kayyem’s comments came in response to a question from Collins over whether she thought there was a “correlation” between the incendiary rhetoric and Tuesday’s fatal shooting by authorities of a Utah man amid an FBI investigation over threats to President Joe Biden.
“Well, absolutely,” Kayyem said, noting that “Chris Wray, the FBI director has said so, has said that he's never seen a threat environment like this heading into the election, especially targeted against people running and targeted against Democrats in particular when we see the online chatter, even though there are attacks against Republicans, it's just we're looking at quantity at this stage.”
Kayyem added that “People think about incitement like you know, the former President Trump might say something and people go off and do something, it's a little bit more complicated than that.”
“How I describe what Trump is doing and some of his language and some of the language we're hearing from other candidates now, is that they're creating a permissive structure. They're creating permission to utilize violence as an extension of just our political debates."
“They're normalizing it, they're winking at it, they're nodding at it, they're essentially, you know, serving as a magnet for it. And that's why it has to be condemned from the top, from the leadership within the GOP as well and essentially make the price of this conduct so sufficiently high that people will not do it.”
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Kayyem said criminal prosecutions and investigations and even deplatforming someone from social media offer deterrence.
“Make the price high for people who are going to legitimize violence, not thoughts, not words, violence as part of our democratic process. So we have to get rid of that permissive structure and that's coming from someone who is likely to be the candidate for the GOP.”
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