Historian Jon Meacham on Friday said the country was experiencing “an extraordinary amount of political violence,” but neglected to mention that this violence was largely being committed by those aligned with the political left.
Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California was handcuffed and briefly detained after he tried to storm a press conference headlined by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles, where Noem and other officials discussed the reaction to riots that broke out after an operation by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Meacham told “Morning Joe” co-host Katty Kay that tensions in the country were comparable to those preceding the Civil War. (RELATED: Dem Rep Demands Trump Admin Pander To Foreign Flag-Waving Rioters)
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“Almost all public officials, including, perhaps most frighteningly, judges who are supposed to be the umpires, who are supposed to be part of the field but have a certain authority, are in, uh, I don’t want to say, an unprecedented threat environment to use that term of art, but it is a real tactile sense of menace in the, in the country,” Meacham, who previously described images of President Trump on trial as “reassuring,” said. “And I think what [New York Times columnist] David [French] has written about so well is really well taken.”
“Part of what’s happened, I think Katty, is, well, first of all, the historical point you ask about the last time it was this bad, not to shake everybody’s Friday morning even more than it’s already shaken, given what’s going on, was the pre-Civil War period where you had an extraordinary amount of political violence and we know how the 1850s turned out,” Meacham continued.
Trump has survived three previous assassination attempts, two of which took place in the 2024 presidential campaign. A Secret Service agent thwarted the apparent assassination attempt on Trump by firing shots at Ryan Wesley Routh, who was allegedly lurking near Trump International Golf Club on Sep. 15, 2024.
Trump was shot in the right ear while giving a speech at a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler Pennsylvania. During his 2016 presidential campaign, a 20-year-old man from the United Kingdom tried to take a police officer’s gun in order to shoot Trump during a campaign event in Las Vegas.
Video posted to social media Saturday showed an individual, who the FBI identified as Elpido Reyna in a Monday night post on X, throwing rocks at the windshields of vehicles containing federal law enforcement personnel with the FBI offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
In Seattle, anti-ICE rioters attacked a man who prevented them from throwing an American flag into a dumpster where a fire was raging.
“Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin posted on X Thursday after the incident with Padilla. “Mr. Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands. @SecretService thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately.” (RELATED: Nancy Pelosi Says Rioters Burning Cars In LA Might Just Be Caught Up In ‘Exuberance Of The Moment’)
Special counsel Jack Smith secured multiple indictments against Trump during the Biden administration, stemming from allegations involving classified documents and Trump’s efforts to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Meacham, who had multiple meetings with then-President Joe Biden in the White House during Biden’s term in office, secretly helped write some of Biden’s speeches for his 2020 presidential campaign.
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