Former President Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt on Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The incident prompted calls from President Joe Biden, Trump and others for national unity and civility.
But when asked what those calls for unity really mean, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, called it “boilerplate political speech.” Decades have passed since the last attempted shooting of a presidential candidate.
“Very few people — in any newsroom, in any executive chamber or political campaign right now — has direct experience with something like this,” Muhammad said on Boston Public Radio Monday. “We are a bit in uncharted waters when it comes to, like: what do you actually say?”
Muhammad said political violence in the United States has become an increasing reality, this assassination attempt being just the latest example. But today’s calls for civility, he argued, look more like lip service instead of politicians committing to working with their peers who they “strenuously disagree” with.
“Sometimes we substitute calls for unity and civility with the hard work of actually transacting different ideas in a democracy,” he said.
Muhammad pointed to some Republican lawmakers that have used the shooting to “fan the flames of division.”
“ Mike Collins, a Republican from Georgia, said that Biden was directly responsible for this and should be indicted for an assassination attempt,” he said. “ Tim Scott himself blamed this on corporate media, as well as elites. So it isn’t as if everyone is calling for unity.”
Sen. J.D. Vance also blamed Biden’s campaign rhetoric for the attempted assassination, with Vance announced as Trump’s pick for vice president less than 48 hours later.
