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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Political Violence: America's Bloody History. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired August 11, 2024 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:36]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
After the shocking assassination on former President Donald Trump, any questions still remain about the shooter and the security failures that allowed him to get so close. Six presidents, including Trump, have survived attacks. Four have been killed while in office. Sadly, our history has also full of other notable political figures being targeted from Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s, to more recent assaults and members of Congress and their families.
Over the next hour, CNN's Sara Sidner examines what we now know about the attempt on former President Trump's life, and have these types of attacks have so often changed our country's history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(CHANTING)
SIDNER (voice-over): Just past 6:00 on a Saturday evening outside Pittsburgh.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hello, Butler, and hello to Pennsylvania --
SIDNER: A political rally is about to devolve into political violence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, there he is.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's on the roof.
SIDNER: Attendees spot a gunman on a roof about two minutes before shots ring out.
MIKE DIFRISCHIA, WITNESS/RECORDED VIDEO: I was able to see him perfectly and I see he had a gun. My wife ran up to law enforcement, but they couldn't seem to see him. They were too close to the building.
TRUMP: Take a look at what happened --
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FBI: You can see the awareness of that gunfire almost register on the presidents face as he looks around.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down! Get down! Get down!
SIDNER: Within seconds --
SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Shooter's down. Are we good to move?
SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Are we clear?
SECRET SERVICE AGENT: We're clear. We're clear. We're clear.
SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Let's move!
SECRET SERVICE AGENT: We're clear.
SIDNER: Former President Trump is whisked offstage. There is blood coming from the top of his right ear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's been shot.
DR. JOSEPH MEYN, WITNESS: I saw Donald Trump get hit. I looked down, I saw a man died in the bleachers.
SIDNER: The man was a spectator, Corey Comperatore 50-years-old, father of two, a volunteer firefighter.
Two other people in the crowd received wounds, described as life altering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see the guy down. I think they hit him because the guy is -- he looks dead.
SIDNER: The 20-year-old shooter armed with his fathers legally purchased AR style rifle, was shot dead at the scene.
MEYN: I'm not shocked that this happened. I'm shocked that I was sitting there going to happen next to me. We shouldn't be at a level of public political discourse in this country where this is going on, it feels like it's 1960 again.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The idea that there's political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of.
SIDNER: But history has shown that's not true.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Our whole history in the United States has is anchored around constant spasms of violence. I mean, we were born in the American Revolution with events like the Boston massacre in the Boston tea party.
Throughout presidential history, there always a target from a would-be assassin.
SIDNER: The last U.S. president shot was Ronald Reagan. That was 1981 when a bullet pierced his lung, nearly killing him.
Patti Davis is his daughter.
What was your gut reaction when you saw that yet another assassin tried to take out, in this case, a former president after what you've been through?
PATTI DAVIS, ACTRESS: One of the things that I was struck by the shooting on Saturday with some of the attendees after Donald Trump was taken off the stage, turning around to the media and giving them the finger. And you could read their lips and the words that were coming out, went right along with that middle finger.
Someone just died in the stands behind you to other people are critically wounded a candidate who you support was just taken with blood in the side of his head. And that's your reaction? That kind of anger. Anger doesn't stay within the confines of words and gestures. It metastasizes, you know? It turns into violent actions.
SIDNER: Those violent actions are usually dubbed political violence.
Reuters news agency identified 213 of them in the two years following January 6, 2021.
[21:05:03]
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: You look at our country's history. We see generally speaking rise in political violence in these moments of great social change. In the period since, '08, '09, we've seen enormous political and social change in this country. And that has led to increased incidence of political violence, and the use of violent rhetoric.
SIDNER: Professor Robert Pape and his team at the University of Chicago recently took a look at the amount of so-called lone-wolf attacks on members of Congress.
PROFESSOR ROBERT PAPE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: What we found is that threats to members of Congress, both Republican members of Congress and Democratic members of Congress rose five fold on an annual basis starting in 2017, with the first year of the Trump presidency.
SIDNER: One of the most violent examples of this was in 2017 when an apparent Bernie Sanders supporter fired on Republican congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Steve Scalise, then majority whip..
REPORTER: We've learned a chilling new development. Hodgkinson was found with a list of names on having including members that were at that baseball field at the time.
SIDNER: James Hodgkinson died following a shootout with police.
In 2022, Paul Pelosi, husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dialed 911 after a man broke into their home and stood by listening to his call. PAUL PELOSI, HUSBAND OF REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): This gentleman just
came into the house and wants to wait here for my wife to come home.
DISPATCHER: Do you know who the person is?
P. PELOSI: No, I don't know he is. He's telling me not to do anything.
DISPATCHER: What is your address, sir?
POLICE OFFICER: Drop the hammer?
UNIDENTIIFED MALE: No.
SIDNER: When police arrived --
POLICE OFFICER: What is going on right there?
SIDNER: This disturbing body camera video shows the intruder hitting Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer fracturing his skull.
COOPER: You were the intended target?
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Yeah.
COOPER: The assailant has told police in a sworn affidavit that he wanted to take you hostage, interrogate you, break your kneecaps with a hammer if you didn't give him the answers that he wanted.
REP. PELOSI: For me, this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target and he's the one who's paying the price.
SIDNER: In 2011, the nation was sent into shock when Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head while simply meeting with constituents in a Tucson parking lot? Six people were killed there, including a nine-year-old girl and Giffords severely wounded, had to resign from office.
In 2022, the target was the FBI, after it searched Donald Trump's Florida home in Mar-a-Lago, looking for classified documents.
JON LEWIS, RESEARCH FELLOW, PROGRAM ON EXTREMISM AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: When an individual drove to Cincinnati field office of the FBI and tried to break into it because he was told on Truth Social, time and time again that the FBI is the enemy of the people, that the FBI is coming to your town soon to take your guns away from you.
SIDNER: That would-be intruder was shot and killed.
Also in 2022, a man with a pistol and a plan to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh called police on himself, according to law enforcement, he was arrested near Kavanaughs home.
But this recent political violence is about more than just so-called lone wolves. Of course, there's January 6, 2021 when several thousand Trump supporters, who had been told the presidential election was stolen, stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to prevent and the results from being certified, at least five people died and approximately 140 officers were injured in the most violent attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years.
NAFTALI: Let's not forget the attempt to kidnap Governor Whitmer in Michigan.
SIDNER: That was in 2020, 11 of 14 men were convicted and sentenced to prison for plotting to kidnap Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
On top of all this, there have been a slew of mass shootings that you might not think of as political violence, but they were.
In 2018, a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, 11 worshippers killed there.
The 2019 shooting at a crowded El Paso Walmart, 23 were murdered. And the shooter wrote a disturbing manifesto.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The author encourages immigrants to return to their home countries, speaking of a Hispanic invasion.
SIDNER: And there was the 2022 attack on a grocery store in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Ten people died there.
[21:10:02]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is very clear investigators say that he came here to target the Black community.
PAPE: With the Tree of Life shooting, the El Paso shooting, and then also with the Buffalo shooting, is these are generally motivated by this right-wing idea called the great replacement, which is the idea he had that Democrats are deliberately adopting policies to replace the white electorate, to target group in each case, Jews, Hispanics, and Blacks varies. But in their writings, they unify this.
They explain how they're hoping that will produce pulled it think what results.
SIDNER: That same conspiracy theory was behind the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter- protester was run over and killed.
DEMONSTRATORS: Jews will not replace us!
SIDNER: In the wake of the attempted assassination of President Trump, the FBI is warning of retaliatory attacks.
BRINKLEY: I think since January 6, if you look at what Southern Poverty law says, we're getting hate speech at levels we haven't seen. So we're kind of in a watch and worry mode, right now.
SIDNER: And June research from University of Chicago suggests there is reason to worry.
PAPE: Ten percent of American adults support the use of force to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. And that 10 percent equates to 26 million American adults.
Our survey also found that 7 percent of American adults support the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency. That equates to 18 million American adults.
JOANNA FREEMAN, HISTORY PROFESSOR, YALE UNIVERSITY: There have been moments in American history that tend to be very violent. The 1850s and the decade before the civil war is one, the 1960s, and the civil rights era is one. We're living along. That seems to be one of those arrows as well.
And in all of those times, what you have is a moment when something dramatic may be changing in American history and the 1850s. That's the fate of slavery. In the 1960s, that's people having more civil rights. Now, it's pretty much the question of democracy.
SIDNER: We'll examine all of that ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: A dark page on the annals of America has been written to the crack of an assassin's bullet.
SIDNER: November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, and First Lady Jackie Kennedy land in Dallas, excited crowds line the streets as the motorcade winds its way through the city, when suddenly shots ring out.
[21:15:04]
REPORTER: The outside shooting.
REPORTER: The first unconfirmed reports say the president was hit in the head.
REPORTER: The pair of men had just administered the last rites of the Catholic Church and President Kennedy. President Kennedy has been assassinated.
NAFTALI: John F. Kennedy's assassination came as a shock to all Americans and to the world.
LEWIS: The Kennedy assassination, one of the first real televised acts of political violence that is captured in real-time.
MARTIN LUTHER KING III, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: When President Kennedy was killed, it felt like the entire nation was in great mourning.
SIDNER: Martin Luther King III was just 6-years-old at the time.
MLK III: I remember thinking what is going to happen now and our nation, because the Kennedy administration represented progress for communities of color.
FREEMAN: There have been moments in American history that tend to be very violent. The 1960s and the civil rights era is one. In the 1960s, entrenched white power holders who were not really excited about more marginalized people getting more civil rights. You have people who feel threatened --
GOV. GEORGE WALLACE (D), ALABAMA: And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.
(CHEERING)
SIDNER: The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously delivered these transformative words on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, less than three months before revelry turned to tragedy. And President John F. Kennedy was killed.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CIVIL RIGHTS ICON: Little Black boys and Black girls would be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers, I have a dream today.
SIDNER: Your father gave the "I have a dream" speech that almost everybody in the world can recite at least part of it. Is the dream realized?
MLK III: Absolutely not. Dad envisioned a nation where freedom and justice and equality would be real fall humankind. We're not there yet. It was a vision that can happen.
ARNDREA KING, PRESIDENT DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE: It's up to each and every one of us to do our part in making that dream a reality.
MLK JR.: And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know the night that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.
SIDNER: On April 3rd, 1968, his final sermon proved prophetic. Less than 24 hours later, Dr. King was assassinated.
MLK III: Dad was not killed because he was talking about people rallying in front of buses are being able to sit down at lunch counters. Dad was killed because he was talking about a reshift of economic priorities making sure that there was opportunity for everyone.
SEN. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world. And that is at Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
SIDNER: On the night of Dr. King's murder, then presidential candidate and Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke to a large crowd on the streets of Indianapolis, filmed by local news WISH TV.
R. KENNEDY: You can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and a desire for revenge we can move in that direction as a country in greater polarization Black people amongst Blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. MLK III: Around the time of dad's assassination, over 100 cities went up in flames. Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy was, did not. That was a magical moment.
KENNEDY: Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther king did to understand and to comprehend and replaced that violence, that stain of a bloodshed that is spread across our land, but an effort to understand compassion and love.
NAFTALI: Beautiful, heartfelt, eloquent speech by a man who sadly would lose his life to a bullet within a matter of months.
R. KENNEDY: I think that we can end the divisions within the United States.
[21:20:06]
SIDNER: Just two months after Dr. King's assassination, CBS News covered Senator Kennedy's victory in the California Democratic primary.
R. KENNEDY: And what has been going on within the United States over the period of the last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it's between Blacks and Whites, between the poor and the more affluent, between age group there on the war in Vietnam, that we can got to work together.
BRINKLEY: That evening at the Bachelor Hotel, he was shot in the back kitchen and mysterious fashion by Sirhan Sirhan.
REPORTER: Senator Kennedy was involved in a shooting.
REPORTER: The last report was hit twice in the head, once in the hip.
NAFTALI: Losing King and Robert Kennedy in the same season was bad enough. But it reminded Americans of JFK's assassination, less than five years before.
PATRICK JOSEPH KENNEDY II, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: I was just a baby when my Uncle Bobby was killed, but I just know what a loss it was not only for their children, my cousins, but a loss for everybody that knew them and knew how much they wanted to change the world. They had so much promise and so much inspiration and hope as part of their whole message.
SIDNER: Patrick J. Kennedy served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the nephew to President John F. Kennedy and Senator Bobby Kennedy, and the son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy.
I know in my father's case, he had many instances where he was attacked, most of them were never reported on because of the worry that even in reporting on them, you would encourage further acts of violence. And so, we lived in a home where there were bulletproof vests and every closet in our house.
SIDNER: It is profoundly upsetting to hear that bulletproof vest were a part of everyday life. Those were just around because of what's happened to your family.
Do you think it's worse than the '60s, politically?
MLK III: Well, it certainly feels like it. In the '60s, we lost a lot of leadership currency, from President Kennedy, to Medgar Evers, to Malcolm X, to dad. So we lost gigantic leadership forces in less than a ten-year period, and then the '70s, there was a political assassination attempt of George Wallace.
SIDNER: The powerfully divisive George Wallace infamously blocked the doors to stop desegregation at the University of Alabama. He was Alabama's governor during the Birmingham sit-ins where peaceful protesters were met with fire hoses and attack dogs, the bombing of the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four little Black girls, and 1965 Selma march, which devolved into what is known as Bloody Sunday.
WALLACE: Don't worry about what the news people say about us. They call us extremists. I want to say we are passionate.
SIDNER: Wallace spoke to this Madison Square Garden crowd during his 1968 presidential bid.
NAFTALI: George Wallace was fighting elites. Wallace also rallied disaffected members of the working class. He fashioned himself a white populist. His appeal was always a racial appeal.
SIDNER: But his 1972 campaign would be the turning point.
(INAUDIBLE)
BRINKLEY: He was shot in a shopping mall in Maryland and he became crippled to the point he could never walk again.
GEORGE WALLACE JR, SON OF FORMER ALABAMA GOVERNOR GEORGE D. WALLACE: He always thought he might be shot. He always believed it will be a head wound, and he would die from that.
SIDNER: Why did he think that?
WALLACE JR.: Because he was so volatile. He was very controversial and he knew that, and he knew he might be shot.
He was resigned to that, though.
SIDNER: Do you think in any way, shape, or form that some of his vitriol, some of the way that he spoke actually encouraged the violence that was perpetrated on him?
[21:25:12]
WALLACE JR.: He would have been raised to believe that segregation was in the best interest of both races. He was a man of deep faith. He had a lot of regrets, Sara, about what his early positions.
SIDNER: Do you think the attempted assassination on your father's life catapulted him to change?
WALLACE JR.: The shooting, when he suffered so much every day from constant chronic pain, he realized he had caused suffering to others.
That bothered him until the day he died.
NAFTALI: George Wallace did not retire from public life, but George Wallace changed or at least he decided to change his appeal.
BRINKLEY: He will then meet with people like Jesse Jackson, the King family, John Lewis and asked for them for forgiveness.
NAFTALI: He refashioned himself as a more tolerant, more open-minded George Wallace.
And when he ran again for governor of Alabama, and he did so successfully, he campaigned for Black votes.
WALLACE JR.: During the last race for governor, he received 90 percent of the Black vote.
GOV. WALLACE: I made a mistake and that's all pay in the past and I -- I am sorry that I did that because it gave the wrong opinion of the kind of a man that I was.
SIDNER: Coming up, the country's violent origins and the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:31:40]
TV ANCHOR: We interrupt, there's been a late development. Shots reported fired outside the hotel where President Reagan spoke a short while ago.
Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, had to watch the assassination attempt on her father the rest of the world.
DAVIS: I didn't know anymore that day, that long day than everybody else did. I was sitting in front of the television.
TV ANCHOR: He was wounded.
TV ANCHOR: My God.
TV ANCHOR: He was -- the president was hit.
SIDNER: In March 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot along the Secret Service agent, a D.C. police officer, and the White House press secretary.
DAVIS: I couldn't get through to my mother in the hospital. I tried and I didn't know anything. I didn't know if he was going to live.
REPORTER: He was wounded in the left chest, we are told. DAVIS: The Secret Service wouldn't let me take a commercial plane
because they have to assume the worst. So I and my brother Michael and my sister Maureen took this Army transport plane at the end of the day and got into Washington or like 2:00 in the morning.
DAVID GERGEN, FORMER REAGAN WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR: His condition is stable. A decision is now being made whether or not to operate to remove the bullet.
The bullet glanced off off the car and then went into his body.
SIDNER: The shooting unmoored Americans.
After the tumultuous 1960s, violence and again struck the leader of the free world. This time, it was a product of a disturbed mind with access to a gun.
TV ANCHOR: The Secret Service confirms the name of the suspect as that of John W. Hinckley, Jr.
SIDNER: One of the most protected men in the world, had now become the target of gun violence.
What were the days like immediately following the attempted assassination of President Reagan, your dad?
DAVIS: My most lasting memory was the shift of mood in this country, and the people who came up to me, who I'm sure were not all supporters of my father, were politics was set aside and they were simply coming to me with compassion and with humanity and with the awareness that I had almost lost my father.
NAFTALI: The American people rallied to Ronald Reagan regardless of their political point of view. The country shared a sense of trauma and grief and concern. The assassination attempt did not divide us.
GERGEN: As soon as he came out of the hospital, the first thing he did was very next day, he went up to Capitol Hill for a joint session of Congress and they were up roaring support for him.
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.
BRINKLEY: The country pulled around Reagan. He had said in the diaries that I've edited, when I woke up in the hospital, I've been staring at the ceiling only to realize that I'm now going to give my life to God, that this was such a near death experience that I'm going to make the world safer to live in by reducing nuclear weapons.
He did go about that Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s.
[21:35:04]
SIDNER: Once he left the White House, President Reagan also softened his stance on gun control, partly because his press secretary, James Brady, was paralyzed from the shooting and remained in a real chair for the rest of his life. ADAM WINKLER, PROFESSOR, UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW: Jim Brady suffered very
significant brain injuries as a result of the shooting.
SIDNER: Unable to return to his dream job serving his White House press secretary, he and his wife, Sarah, became champions for gun safety legislation that would eventually be known as the Brady Bill.
KRIS BROWN, PRESDENT, BRADY UNITED AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE: They were a lifelong Republicans. They were gun owners. And, of course, they had tremendous connections in Congress, and obviously with Ronald Reagan himself.
WINKLER: The signature piece of legislation advanced by Sarah and Jim Brady was a background check law that would impose small waiting period on those who wanted to purchase firearms and would provide for federal fully licensed gun dealers to conduct a background check anytime someone tried to purchase a firearm.
SIDNER: The bradys were relentless advocates today.
JIM BRADY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Today, I can tell you how hard it is to have people speaking down to me. Yes, I experienced brain pain sometimes so intense, I cry. But nothing is harder than losing the independence and control we all have so value in our life.
SIDNER: In 1991, 10 years after the assassination attempt, the Brady Bill would find another powerful, an unlikely advocate in the first president endorsed by the NRA, President Ronald Reagan.
WINKLER: Ronald Reagan's support of the Brady Bill was a surprise to many. He had been the most forceful president in American history for the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
SIDNER: James and Sara Brady, they really pushed for sensible gun laws after he was gravely injured. Did that change your dad?
DAVIS: It did. I think he felt responsible. Hinckley literally shot other people out of the way. I know my father felt like, well, their lives wouldn't have been changed and shattered like this if it weren't for me.
SIDENER: Former President Reagan wrote an opinion piece in "The New York Times" titled "Why I'm for the Brady Bill".
BROWN: That gave members of Congress Republican and Democrat cover to be able to say, well, here is President Reagan, someone who is himself a survivor of gun violence and who is a friend of the National Rifle Association saying that this law should be passed.
SIDNER: Finally, in 1993, the Brady bill became the law of the land and an assault weapons ban followed closely behind in 1994, supported again by Reagan, flanked by former presidents from both sides of the aisle.
WINKLER: There was no doubt that the advocacy of so many living presidents help push the law towards passage. SIDNER: The gun lobby was outraged by the new gun restrictions. This time, a more extreme fringe subset of Second Amendment supporters mobilized an edge their way into the mainstream.
WINKLER: The extreme gun rights advocates that emerged thought that Democratic and liberal policies adopted in Washington were illustrations of government grown too big and too powerful, and too oppressive. That view the right to bear arms became much more popular over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s.
SIDNER: This uncompromising vision of an absence salute Second Amendment right stymied future gun legislation and dominated right- wing politics.
BROWN: Guns are clearly embedded into our national identity.
SIDNER: The assault weapons ban passed in 1994 included a provision that forced Congress to reauthorize it after ten years, or it would expire.
WINKLER: The NRA and the gun rights movement were instrumental in defeating the re-authorization of the assault weapons ban. And there was no longer sufficient support in Washington, D.C. for a ban on these military style rifles.
The law expired in 2004, and in the decades that followed, we saw a huge increase in the number of these military style rifles on the streets of America.
SIDNER: And in the aftermath of countless mass shootings, in the United States, the fallout from the gun debate has left a trail of dead and wounded in its wake.
Gunmen in countless shootings, you semiautomatic weapons and military style equipment, including this most recent attack on former President Donald Trump.
[21:40:10]
NAFTALI: We defined something as political violence because of the motive of the attacker. But even mass shooting caused by mental illness can have political consequences.
SIDNER: We as a country have endured the push and pull of political violence since the dawn of our democracy.
Coming up, a history lesson on the routes of political violence going all the way back to the birth of the nation.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:45:26]
BRINKLEY: Wherever chapter we're turning to an American history political violence, it's replete.
SIDNER: Chapter one, growing pains.
FREEMAN: In the first 12 years of the government under the Constitution, there were a series of rebellions. In one way or another, they represented American citizens who felt that something was going too far. The whiskey rebellion, which is a response to attacks on internal goods that Alexander Hamilton for secretary of the treasury put into play.
These farmers in western Pennsylvania begin to protest about this, begin to burn down the houses of tax collectors.
SIDNER: This illustration from 1793 show citizens in Pennsylvania hauling off a tax collector, tarred and feathered.
FREEMAN: Government has been under the Constitution only since 1789. So the idea at the time that citizens are rising up and protesting against a government act is kind of terrifying particularly those in empower.
SIDNER: Those in power had another battle to fight, each other.
BRINKLEY: They used to take canes and just beat each other in the Senate, that we used to have duels.
FREEMAN: The duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, former secretary of the treasury, takes place in 1804.
For any elite politician, your reputation mattered. And if he were dishonored in a serious way, then you would probably not gain office. So Burr is dishonored by Hamilton several times, challenging Hamilton to a duel.
SIDNER: Aaron Burr, the then-vice president of the United States, kills Alexander Hamilton.
FREEMAN: America's first assassination attempt against the president happens in 1835, against Andrew Jackson.
SIDNER: Jackson, the seventh commander in chief.
FREEMAN: A reddish American house painter named Richard Lawrence was waiting on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Lawrence pulled out a pistol and directly shot at Jackson and the pistol misfired.
Lawrence was someone who was mentally unstable. But what's interesting about this very first assassination attempt is that it was politicized. People began pointing to Jackson's enemies and other people claim that it was fake. It was a ploy for Jackson to get sympathy.
SIDNER: Soon, America would face its deadliest war.
BRINKLEY: Anybody who is going to look at America n the 1850s and 1860s will tell you where a lot more violent than it is today.
SIDNER: Chapter two, the battle to abolish slavery. FREEMAN: People, particularly Southerners, were becoming more and more
extreme and what they were prepared to do to preserve slavery and to fight back against abolitionists and antislavery advocates.
SIDNER: The 16th U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, lead the Union, the North, against the Confederacy, the South.
FREEMAN: Brother against brother, it is. And on our own home ground, it's a bloody violent civil war.
SIDNER: Historians estimate roughly 750,000 people were killed.
BRINKLEY: At the moment of Lincoln's triumph, he gets gunned down. John Wilkes Booth, the Confederate sympathizer, killing Lincoln.
SIDNER: Lincoln was shot in the back of the head, the first presidential assassination in America.
BRINKLEY: We've seen an uptick in political violence.
SIDNER: 1865, the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
LEIWIS: The Klan really is one of the earliest and most aggressive actors that we see attempting to use political violence to achieve their goals. The Klan at the local level, really taking steps to push back efforts to bring about civil rights through lynchings, burning down black churches.
In 1881, James Garfield was shot at a railroad station and later died.
The gunman, Charles Guiteau, shot the 20th U.S. president because he refused to appoint him as ambassador to Europe. Garfield assassin also had a history of mental health issues.
[21:50:14]
BRINKLEY: Then you get a third Republican killed William McKinley in 1901.
SIDNER: The 25th us president was shot and killed at the Worlds Fair in Buffalo, New York.
BRINKLEY: They pulled out right at close range and shot McKinley.
SIDNER: It would be more than 60 years though, before another U.S. president was assassinated. But the attempts continued.
BRINKLEY: Theodore Roosevelt becomes president after McKinley, he gets shot by a little anarchist in Milwaukee.
Franklin Roosevelt, a would-be assassin came and put bullets all around him.
Harry Truman, one day because he was looking out the window and a group of Puerto Rican assassins were there.
And Gerald Ford had two very serious assassination attempts.
SIDNER: When we come back --
GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R), WEST VIRGINIA: We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're in a really concerning place.
NAFTALI: Enough is enough
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[21:55:35]
SIDNER: In the hours and days following the attack, calls for unity came swiftly from both sides of the aisle.
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): The greatest threat to America right now is the fact that we're horribly divided.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We need a unified message. We need to turn the temperature down.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It's time to cool it down.
SIDNER: On the last night of the RNC, former President Trump began with a message of unity.
TRUMP: Thank you very much.
In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens. We are one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
SIDNER: But he then turned back to attacking his political enemies.
TRUMP: Crazy Nancy Pelosi, the whole thing.
SIDNER: Others at the RNCD also returned to extremely divisive language.
SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): Biden the Democrats are doing everything they can to tear down this great country.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.
JUSTICE: We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.
NAFTALI: After the assassination of JFK, the country did not engage in finger-pointing afterwards. The assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Republicans did not blame
Democrats for this attack on the president.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: J.D. Vance immediately blamed Democrats and he posted the central premise of the Biden in campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congressman Mike Collins posting on X that President Biden, quote, sent the orders.
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Joe Biden told his donors that it's time to put Trump in a bullseye.
BIDEN: Folks --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Biden has a very harsh rhetoric.
BIDEN: Look, I believe that the president is literally an existential threat.
LESTER HOLT, NBC NEWS AN CHOR: You said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye.
BIDEN: It was a mistake to use the word. I didn't -- I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye, meant focus on him, focus on what he's doing.
BRINKLEY: Trump in particular is known for despicable language.
TRUMP: Knock the crap out of him.
I like to punch him in the face.
BRINKLEY: So he shouldn't be forgiven and January 6 shouldn't be forgotten simply because of Butler, Pennsylvania.
TRUMP: You'll never take back our country with weakness.
LEWIS: I think we should absolutely be concerned about the risk that rhetoric poses. We've seen the impact at the Unite the Right rally and January 6. And so, it's incumbent upon these individuals who do have these platforms to not lean into that rhetoric.
NAFTALI: The question is, will alone acts of political violence, be followed by an intensification of political violence?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Telegram channels for branches of the Proud Boys militia group have been calling for civil war and violence.
DONNA HUTZ, TRUMP RALLY SHOOTING WITNESS: Personally, I'm still afraid to civil war.
FREEMAN: I think to think of it as a civil war makes it too neat and tidy an idea for whatever comes next.
NAFTALI: We don't have the preconditions necessary for civil war. But we do have the preconditions for more political violence.
FREEMAN: So it's possible bad things might happen. It's also possible that people might use this moment to work for something good to bolster democracy because they now realize it needs to be bolstered and protected.
NAFTALI: This is one of those moments where we should take a deep breath and look at our history. And saying enough is enough.
DAVIS: It is America, right now, but let's maybe decide that it's not the America we want it to be. How about that?
REAGAN: Now, more than ever, we all need to depend on one another to achieve our goals for this country.
MLK III: My father used to say, we can fly on the air like birds --
MLK JR.: -- like birds. We've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.
MLK III: We've got to figure out how do we create a better nation and a world for all of God's.
P. KENNEDY: We want to hear each other and we're not feeling that in America today. We're not feeling that we're hearing each other.
R. KENNEDY: But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times.
[22:00:09]
