Atmosphere of Assassination

By Abe Greenwald

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

Last Thursday, I wrote about a New York Times podcast on which Hasan Piker, Nadja Spiegelman, and Jia Tolentino discussed the political virtues of left-wing crime and terrorism. The next day, I wrote about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s dangerous doxxing of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. In that newsletter. “It’s not hard to see where this kind of thing leads,” I wrote. “Because we’ve already seen it go there.” And I closed it out with this: “What happened to that national conversation we were supposed to have about turning down the temperature of political debate? This was a strange and sickening week for American politics.”

 

To be honest, I reread that bit after the letter was sent out and wondered whether I had been unnecessarily dramatic.

 

On Saturday night, a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump and other administration figures at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

 

It turns out I’d been entirely too squishy.

 

The institutionalized liberal embrace of political violence constitutes a state of national emergency. What’s worse is that we’re nowhere near the end. Leading liberal lights either don’t recognize or don’t care what they’re doing. 

 

On Sunday night, for example, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed Trump and asked him to respond to the charges in his would-be assassin’s manifesto. Last I heard, the press was against publishing shooter manifestos lest they inspire future killers. Oh, that’s right—only when the shooter is trans.

 

When the gunman takes a shot at Trump, however, the press picks through the manifesto for talking points and asks the president to defend himself against the accusations of the man who tried to kill him.

 

But the more revealing part of O’Donnell’s interview came later. “What do you say to people,” she had the nerve to ask, “who are encouraging political violence or even cheering it on?” Here’s my answer: Don’t echo and elevate the grievances of gunmen who are trying to destroy

the nation, Norah.

 

When news of the attempt on Trump first broke, someone sent me a text reading, “Maybe it’s just some nut.”

 

I no longer know what that means. One could say that anyone who tries to kill the president of the United States is, colloquially speaking, a “nut.” Whether or not that person is motivated by radical ideology or theology, he’s acting outside the bounds of what we recognize as sane behavior. And if he’s motivated by some florid delusion, he’s obviously unwell.

 

Today, it’s not so easy to tell the difference between violent political philosophy, violent religious fundamentalism, and violent psychosis. Maybe the differences between them were always illusory, but they’re now undeniably blended. Wokeness is no less a faith than a philosophy. Transgender theory is both delusion and doctrine. And then there’s anti-Semitism, which is at once a superstitious cult, a political weapon, and a consuming sickness.

 

I just don’t see many present-day assassins you could plausibly describe as “just some nut.” A mentally ill person marinating in a culture of political violence isn’t just some nut. He’s a node in an irrational network. So too is the sane person who comes to believe the influencers, media outlets, and politicians that support or advocate violent resistance.

 

We don’t yet know exactly what Trump’s latest would-be assassin is. But he, like all the others, is a product of a new national madness.