Donald Trumps incendiary rhetoric is fuelling a volatile political divide, turning words into weapons on Americas streets, writes DrJeff McMullen.

AS POLITICAL VIOLENCE escalates in the United States and chaos spreads, democracy itself is under threat. The words of anger, ill-considered and increasingly crude, are accelerant on the American bonfire.

When PresidentDonald Trumptold his top generals and admirals, Its awar from withinwere under invasion from within, he assumed the role of Provocateur in Chief.

Back in 1942, the U.S. Supreme Courtruledthat some words like these, by their very utterance, could shatter the peace by inciting violence. That wise guidance has been ignored by President Trump and many of those he declares his enemies. They are forgetting that violence is a contagion.

After the shooting of the MAGA crusader,Charlie Kirk, in Utah last month, the President boasted that he did not forgive his enemies. He hated them. Very rapidly, the war of words escalated.

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Toying with the idea of invoking theNational Emergencies Act of 1976or, more radically, the1807 Insurrection Act, Trump has displayed an eagerness to deploy the military and National Guard to cities run by the Democrats, Blue strongholds including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Memphis, Chicago and Washington DC. Heclaimedthat Portland, Oregon was burning down because of domestic terrorists.

As National Guardsmen from the Red State of Texas were dispatched to a base outside Chicago, the Provocateur in Chief went further. He demanded that his long-time antagonist, billionaire Illinois GovernorJB Pritzkerand Chicago MayorBrandon Johnsonbe gaoled for not doing enough to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agents as they continue to round up Latino immigrants.

These Democrat officials have committed no crime. They vigorously oppose Trump because they fear that he is creating a crisis to utilise the National Guard in Democrat strongholds during next years midterm elections.

It is not a one-sided war of words. California GovernorGavin NewsomhastrolledTrump relentlessly with mocking AI parodies that pick up where the animatedSouth Parkseries left off.

In theirPolitics War Roompodcast, Democrat veteransJames CarvilleandAl Huntderide President Trump as demented, a wannabe King and a hopeless liar.

Trumps vanquished rival in the last presidential contest,Kamala Harris, has her own share of incendiary words about her adversaries.

At a Los Angeles event this week billed as aDay of Unreasonable Conversation, Harrissaid:

The Presidents most vociferous defenders, especially Vice PresidentJD Vanceand Deputy Chief of StaffStephen Miller, reply with apocalyptic warnings, rhetorical volleys and infantile memes, meant to prove that the wicked ideology of the radical Left is to blame for the darkness of this American nightmare.

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We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil, Stephen Millersaidin his astonishing sermon after Charlie Kirk became a MAGA martyr.

These are all surely fighting words, not unlike Trumps extraordinary defiance afterThomas Matthew Crooksnarrowly missed assassinating the President at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 2024. The raised fist, the angry blood-smeared face and the cry of fight, fight echoes loudly still.

While President Trump wants world attention now on his attempts to end the conflict in Gaza, that storied quest for a Nobel Peace Prize, at home in America, his words rattle of vengeance.

Is retribution a consequence of Trumps fury over his 34 felony convictions? Is that why he has the former FBI DirectorJames Comeyon trial and threatens to go after others in the judiciary and Congress, anyone who defies his belief that he owns everything? Put yourself in his shoes for a moment.

Tellingly, the 79-year-old President has experienced at least four foiled assassination attempts. This would make some leaders more cautious about their words and public appearances.

In 2016, a British 20-year-old,Michael Steven Sandford, tried to grab a police officers gun to shoot Trump at a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2017,Gregory Lee Leingangstole a forklift in North Dakota with the plan of trying to ram the then-Presidents armour-plated vehicle known as the Beast. Just two months after Trumps close shave in Pennsylvania last year, Secret Servicemen captured a rifleman,Ryan Wesley Routh, who had planned an ambush on the Presidents Florida golf course.

The truth is violence stalks American leaders, whether or not they incite mobs with deep grievances or provoke a dangerously disturbed individual.

As a foreign correspondent for over a decade in the United States, I reported on the attempted assassinations of PresidentsGerald FordandRonald Reagan. Covering the White House, I was aware that four sitting presidents had been assassinated. I came to seriously appreciate that the Secret Service has a very tough job in a nation where so many scores are settled viciously.

The United States was born in a bloody revolution and has never healed after its frontier massacres, the bone-deep poison of slavery and a devastatingCivil War, causing between 600,000 and 800,000 deaths. The addiction to gun carrying, feuding gangs, conspiratorial cults and extreme religious nationalism is such a toxic mix. What we are witnessing, the heightened danger of a political divide as deep and menacing as the San Andreas Fault, has been a long time in the making.

As Trumpism spreads and the climate crisis worsens, the cost of denial, greed and inaction grows impossible to ignore.

I used to quip to my travelling cameraman, combat veteranDavid Brill, Who is making this movie? WhenJohn Lennonwas assassinated, the shooter,Mark Chapman, was obsessed with the Beatles music. Ronald Reagans would-be assassin,John Hinckley, wanted to prove something to actressJodie Foster.

Somehow, the American Dream becomes a delusion for angry men. The real America that I discovered journeying through all 50 states was more troubled and troubling than anything Hollywood dreamed up.

This is why the current box-office drawcard,One Battle After Another, is certainly a timely reflection of the ongoing orgy of American violence.Leonardo DiCaprios burnt-out radical lefty is pitted againstSean Penns pitiful paramilitary thug leading I.C.E. raids to round up hapless immigrants. The battle opens in a cage where the illegals are detained.

The radical extremes, the violence of Left and Right, are grotesquely satirised by directorPaul Thomas Anderson. But you will walk out of this dystopian movie and think it is art imitating life. The nightly news is more disturbing than the movie.

While Donald Trump is Provocateur in Chief, he has spent years assembling a team of veritable haters. Who can forget The War Room podcaster,Steve Bannon, saying that the nations leading infectious diseases expert leading the fight against COVID, DrAnthony Fauci, should have hishead on a pike, alongside the skull of then FBI Director,Christopher Wray?

On the political Left, podcasters such asHasan Pikerhave built massive followings and are not shy about using hyperbolic violent rhetoric. Piker recently apologised, admitting that he had said things without thinking, including arash tauntthat a Florida Senator should be killed if people there really cared about Medicare fraud.

After the United Health Care CEO,Brian Thompson, was gunned down in New York, social media was flooded with sympathetic comments about the shooter,Luigi Mangione. Too often, someone carelessly rants that the victim deserved it.

Most Americans have probably forgotten how Fox Televisions former notorious shock jock,Bill OReilly, regularly taunted DrGeorge Tillerwith Tiller the baby killer before this provider of womens health was murdered. Anti-abortion activists have committed at least 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 acts of violence and 531 assaults, according to theSouthern Poverty Law Centre.

In Americas war of words, these grimmest facts are still ignored. The U.S. has the highest number of school shootings in the world, with at least 53 this year. Each day, some 125 Americans are killed with guns.

Yes, Mr President. Your words are locked and loaded. You would say that there is a war within. Tragically, its you and your fellow Americans who are inflicting more damage on your democracy and its place in the world than any of your mortal foreign enemies.

DrJeff McMullenAM is a journalist, author and filmmaker known for his reporting and advocacy for sixty years. McMullen has been a foreign correspondent for Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reporter forFour CornersandSixty Minutes, anchor of the 33-part issue series on ABC Television,Difference of Opinionand director of independent documentaries. He was awarded the United Nations Media Peace Prize for his trilogy of hour-long documentaries about conflicts in Central America.

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