Biden said political violence was 'unheard of' in US. There's a long (and recent) history

As law enforcement investigates an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, his political opponent President Joe Biden condemned the violence and characterized it as outside the norm.

"The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of. It was just not appropriate. And we — everybody — everybody must condemn it. Everybody," Biden said in a statement after the July 13 shooting.

Law enforcement identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, as the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally shooting suspect. Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief from the area, was killed and two others were critically injured.

Neither the White House nor Biden’s campaign provided evidence to back Biden’s statement that this kind of violence is "unheard of" in the U.S. The comment ignores that U.S. history shows numerous occasions during which political leaders were targeted by politically-motivated violence, including in recent years.

Although it has been decades since an armed person attacked a U.S. president, there have been several assassination attempts throughout modern history. In 2005, a man threw a grenade at President George W. Bush when he was attending a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was injured in an assassination attempt, suffering an injured arm, broken rib, punctured lung and serious internal bleeding.

Recent attacks on individual members of Congress and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol qualify as political violence. 

"The assassination attempt against Trump was in no way unprecedented," Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow in the democracy, conflict and governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, told PolitiFact in an email. "In fact, in the current climate of heightened threat and rhetoric, it was almost inevitable that a federal political candidate would be attacked." 

Biden’s remarks the next day acknowledged past political violence.

"We must not go down this road in America," Biden said. "We’ve traveled it before throughout our history.  Violence has never been the answer, whether it’s with members of Congress in both parties being targeted in the shot, or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6th, or a brutal attack on the spouse of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, or information and intimidation on election officials, or the kidnapping plot against a sitting governor, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump. There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized." 

News that a former president with Secret Service protection faced a life-threatening, violent attack shocked many Americans. But multiple experts on gun violence and political violence noted that the U.S. has a long history of political violence against presidents, political candidates and Congressional members.

Javed Ali, a University of Michigan associate professor of practice who previously worked for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, said July 14 in an email to PolitiFact that the motivations of the now-deceased suspected shooter remained unclear, but it was "the latest in a long line of similar events in U.S. history."

Political violence directed at U.S. presidents began with Abraham Lincoln in 1865, followed by James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and John F. Kennedy in 1963, each of whom died after being shot. President Gerald Ford escaped uninjured from two 1975 attempts. Gov. George Wallace survived a shooting in 1972 while running for president. In 1981, Reagan was injured.

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., was murdered in June 1968 while campaigning for the presidency. All were shootings or attempted shootings. Two historians documented other examples of candidates or political leaders who faced assassination attempts.

The attack on Trump appears to fit a lone shooter "pattern of politically-motivated violence, which also has been demonstrated against members of Congress in June 2017, when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot and wounded," Ali said of the Louisiana Republican.

Some experts, including Kleinfeld, also pointed to several examples of political violence directed at groups — particularly communities of color — and prominent political and social justice leaders.

"America has a long history of episodic political violence, from violence against Catholics and immigrants by the Know Nothing party in the early 1800s, to the blood-soaked Kansas-Missouri borderlands in the abolitionist and slave fights of the 1850s, the Civil War, and then the fight against civil rights 1950s to 1960s," Kleinfeld said. She added that from 1963 to 1968 alone, assassins killed Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and both John F. and Robert Kennedy.

Threats against members of Congress and federal judges have also increased, Kleinfeld said, and local and state officials have also faced threats.

When Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in 2022 said threats of political violence had increased against election officials, judges and lawmakers, we rated her claim Mostly True. We found that U.S. Capitol Police data showed that threats against members of Congress rose from 902 in 2016 to 9,625 in 2021, a roughly tenfold increase, before declining modestly in 2022. Data released by the Capitol Police in January 2024 showed 7,501 cases in 2022 and 8,008 cases in 2023.

Members of Congress from both political parties face a wide range of threats through mail, email, telephone, social media and the internet, Capitol Police said.

Earlier this year, in anticipating the campaign season, Capitol Police Assistant Chief of Protective and Intelligence Operations Ashan M. Benedict signaled a focus on the agency’s "expanding mission"  to keep members of Congress safe.  

Sam Oliker-Friedland, executive director at the Institute for Responsive Government, a group that works to make government and elections more accessible, said, "Political violence has been a troubling, consistent issue, less driven by idealogues executing a strategy than troubled people with access to guns who read the news. And from the reporting I'm reading today, this fits that pattern." 

Threats against election officials have drawn less attention. In July, a judge sentenced Andrew Nickels, an Indiana man, to 14 months in prison after he left a voicemail threatening the life of Rochester Hills, Michigan, Clerk Tina Barton after the 2020 election. 

"Any move toward violence scares me the most for the dedicated public servants who often have many fewer resources than a presidential campaign," Oliker-Friedland said.

Featured Fact-check

Donald Trump Jr.

stated on July 17, 2024 in Speech

After being shot at a Milwaukee rally in 1912, former President Teddy Roosevelt “finished his speech and he kept fighting.”

Here are some high-profile political violence incidents over the past 15 years:

U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz.: On Jan. 8, 2011, Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents at a "Congress on your corner" event in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona. Giffords was the target of an assassination attempt and was seriously wounded.

According to news reports, Jared Lee Loughner became fixated on Giffords several years before the shooting. Loughner first met Giffords in 2007 at a community event where he asked her a question and was "unsatisfied with her answer," CNN reported. Loughner was sentenced in 2012 to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for the shooting that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Giffords.

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R- La.: On June 14, 2017, Scalise, then the House majority whip, and four others were wounded when James Hodgkinson shot at them during their baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. Hodgkinson, who was angry with Trump and posted rants about Republicans online, was killed by police. Authorities reported he was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Paul Pelosi: On Oct. 28, 2022, Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was attacked in the couple’s San Francisco home by an intruder. David DePape, who intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, struck Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer. DePape was sentenced in May to 30 years in prison following his conviction on assault and attempted kidnapping charges. 

U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas' son, Daniel Anderl: On July 19, 2020, Anderl was fatally shot by a lawyer posing as a delivery driver at the judge’s New Jersey home, and her husband Mark was injured. Roy Den Hollander, the shooter, shot himself and died.News reports said Hollander described himself as an "anti-feminist" lawyer and targeted the judge.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: In October 2020, law enforcement announced that multiple people were arrested and charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat. Multiple people were convicted in state and federal court.

U.S. Capitol: More than 1,400 defendants have been charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as lawmakers inside sought to certify the 2020 election results. Some of the defendants carried weapons. Some rioters threatened the then-vice president, chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" 

Biden said, "The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of."

Although it has been decades since a violent attack targeting a U.S. president, presidents, presidential candidates and political leaders have been targeted by violence throughout U.S. history. Four presidents were assassinated and other presidents survived shootings. 

In recent years, two House representatives have survived shootings, a House speaker’s husband was attacked, a governor was targeted and the U.S. Capitol,  filled with lawmakers, was under siege.

We rate this statement False.

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