Republicans won’t keep up their peace-and-unity charade till November

According to Politico, Washington D.C., is a city shrouded in fear of violence. But not violence from foreign terrorists or crime. Like many cities, Washington has seen a large drop in violent crime over the last year. 

The violence that has the citizens of the nation’s capital terrified is political violence, the kind often inspired by politicians wielding violent rhetoric. And most of that rhetoric has its origin in one man.

Last week, Donald Trump and his Republican Party tried to curtail that rhetoric, distance themselves from the violence that recently threatened Trump’s life and lay claim to calls for national unity. But the problem for Trump and his MAGA Republicans is that violence is all they have. Turning the spotlight on other policies requires first having other policies.

And their biggest idea could be the single largest act of political violence in the history of the United States.

As Politico reports, political violence has always been something that holds a place in the capital. However …

[I]n the 45th and possibly 47th president, America has a leading political figure of unprecedented rhetorical violence. He talked about a “blood bath” if he doesn’t win. He suggested retired Gen. Mark Milley deserves execution. He amplified a social media post accusing Republican critic Liz Cheney of “treason” and calling for her to face a military tribunal. He’s made reference to enemies as “vermin” and said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, happened less than four years ago. D.C. residents don’t worry that Trump can inspire violence—they know that he can.

Trump’s defenders can claim that his shouts of “I am your retribution” are nothing but rhetoric. However, that doesn’t mean everyone gets the message. It takes only one person and their far-too-common AR-15 to turn a phrase borrowed from Hitler into an action … that also might have been borrowed from Hitler.

It’s no surprise that this kind of talk is frightening in Washington. As Politico points out, members of Congress might have been the primary target on Jan. 6, but it was local police and Capitol Hill staffers who took the brunt of physical abuse.

Add in how Project 2025 calls for a purge of federal employees, or how thoroughly Trump and his associates have bought the idea that the government is pervaded by deep-state operatives who are acting against him, and fear seems like the right reaction.

Trump and Republicans are trying to put forward a mock unity that mostly consists of mouthing platitudes while reducing calls for retribution. But as the hall of yawning Republican delegates showed at the Republican National Convention this week, without their calls for violence, they have nothing else. They were forced to put on a circus act, just to kill time and try to stir the listless crowd.

As the RNC also showed, Trump can’t keep his mouth shut. During his speech on Thursday night, he could have stepped up to the podium for half an hour, given his thanks for the bullet that missed, said something halfway magnanimous about President Joe Biden, cribbed a few lines from Abraham Lincoln, and stepped off the stage. 

If Trump had done that, he’d have finally given the media that “changed Trump” they’ve been searching for so long. But he didn’t do that. He couldn’t.

Trump loves the sound of his own voice too much, and he loves it best when it’s either making threats or whining. Trump cannot stay quiet.

Neither could Sen. Ron Johnson, who blamed his remarks about how Democrats represent a “clear and present danger” to the nation (a phrase meaning a risk that justifies immediate action) on loading the wrong speech into the teleprompter. 

It's not that Republicans have stopped wanting to put their political opponents in front of firing squads. They're just trying a little harder not to talk about it.

That doesn’t mean that Republicans are actually interested in reaching out to a more diverse set of voters. As The Atlantic notes, Trump has nothing to sell except a kind of faux nostalgia and the same anti-immigrant sentiments he’s expressed since he entered the race in 2015. 

As The Bulwark reports, the selection of Sen. J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate is a defensive move, locking down Trump's aggrieved white male base. It’s this group that Trump advisers see as the key to the election.

“Trump wins white men in 2024 the way he did in 2016, he wins. There’s no question,” said one Trump adviser. It’s that absolute dependence on the white male vote that has Trump’s campaign constantly cranking out signs that say “Blacks for Trump” or “Women for Trump” even when it’s white males who may end up waving them. Those groups are a shiny object to distract the press from the racist, misogynist core of the campaign.

“You guys [in the press] would just love us to print ‘Whites for Trump’ T-shirts and call us racists,” the adviser said, echoing others involved with the campaign. “We want the media focusing on the other stuff and the media can’t help itself but oblige.”

Trump needs white men. He especially needs white men who feel that white men aren’t getting a fair shake in a world where other people are considered equal. The key to securing that white male vote is telling those men that women are their property and that other people are here at their discretion.

From his first appearance, Trump has nurtured that white male base on a diet of red meat that always seems to involve locking someone up or threatening them with death. How are they going to keep those white men happy without maintaining the calls for vengeance? 

Don’t worry—they won’t. Now that the RNC is over, expect the full panoply of Republican calls for violence to return. It’s not like anyone is going to call them on it, not when they have Democrats in disarray to fill the headlines.

Even when they were pretending to be nicer in Milwaukee, Republicans didn’t stop waving signs for their biggest and most important act of political violence. Just how many people would be affected by the mass deportation plan being pushed by Trump (and by Project 2025) isn’t known. But it’s a fair bet it would far exceed the 100,000 Native Americans who were forced onto the Trail of Tears or the 120,000 Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. Some suggestions have put the number as high as 12 million.

Ripping that many people from their homes, throwing them in mass detention camps, and then deporting them to nations where they may face retribution from governments or gangs is an enormous act of state violence. It might even be enough to satisfy Trump’s white male followers, although it won’t give them that gallows-at-the-White-House thrill of seeing Trump’s perceived enemies marched in front of military tribunals.

So maybe he’ll do both.

But can those supporters get by over the next three and a half months if Republicans try to go vengeance-light in their rallies and statements?

Republicans are trying to pretend that they are concerned about politicians urging violence. But don’t be surprised to see their calls for violence to return to above-normal levels in short order.

Violence is what they have. They might try running on policy—but first they’d hate to make some.