Saturday night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, which marks the third targeting of President Donald Trump in the last two years, comes after years of mainstream and vitriolic anti-Trump rhetoric from celebrities, pundits, and Democrat officials.
During a White House press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that eleven years of Trump demonization from the left, commentators, and some in the media fostered a climate that today’s political violence stems from.
Reinforcing Leavitt’s point that political violence is widely acceptable among the left, an April 2025 Rutgers and Network Contagion Research Institute report found that 56 percent of respondents who identified as left of center said murdering Trump would be at least somewhat justified.
There is an abundance of examples of prominent figures in Hollywood, on the left, and in the media demonizing Trump.
Three mainstream late-night hosts have used inflammatory rhetoric toward Trump in recent years. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is the most recent to use such language, which is particularly relevant given the attack at the Washington Hilton hotel Saturday evening. Just last week, Kimmel stated that first lady Melania Trump has “a glow like an expectant widow,” drawing strong condemnation from the first lady and president on Monday, days after the suspected gunman, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, allegedly targeted Trump and top administration officials.
In November 2023, Seth Meyers said on NBC’s Late Night that Trump used “openly fascist rhetoric” at a rally and said Trump was planning to “complete his authoritarian takeover of government and install an autocracy of cronies and loyalists if he’s elected next year,” the Guardian reported at the time.
In November 2023, Stephen Colbert called Trump a “fascist” on CBS’s Late Show.
Left-wing pundits have used negatively charged language to describe Trump as well. In May 2025, Rachel Maddow of MS Now, formerly MSNBC, told Colbert, “We are in the midst of an attempted authoritarian overthrow of the U.S. government.”
“And it is not by an insurgent movement… It’s the party in power,” she added, per the Advocate.
WATCH — Leavitt: Lies About Trump Have Led “Crazy People to Believe Crazy Things” and “Commit Violence”:
On her final show of The ReidOut on MSNBC in February 2025, Joy Reid said, per the Hill, “When you are in the midst of a crisis and specifically a crisis of democracy, how do you resist when fascism isn’t just coming, it’s already here? So what, if anything, can you do about it?”
“For one thing, you can try to learn from history, from what people in this situation, in countries around the world and in America have done before. As my friend Rachel Maddow always says, history is here to help,” she added.
Ahead of then-candidate Trump’s historic Madison Square Garden rally in October 2024, pundit James Carville said the rally mirrored a Nazi rally there in 1939.
“See what happened there. They are telling you exactly what they’re going to do, they’re telling you, ‘We’re going to institute a fascist regime,’” Carville told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, as the Huffington Post reported.
WATCH — Trump Calls for Unity After White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting:
Like pundits and late-night hosts, sitting Democrat officials have peddled in extreme rhetoric regarding Trump and Republicans.
While speaking about efforts among Democrats and Republicans to redraw Congressional districts throughout the country, just days before Saturday’s assassination attempt, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the top-ranking Democrat in the national government, save Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), said, “We are in an era of maximum warfare. Everywhere, all the time.”
When asked about the comments on Monday, Jeffries defended them.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) said earlier this year on the No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen podcast that “heads do need to roll certainly within the administration.”
In August, the New Republic reported Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who many suspect to be a potential 2028 presidential candidate, told the Siren of the redistricting showdown that “we’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is also suspected of being a potential 2028 Democrat presidential candidate, said last year that the Trump administration is “fascist” and “didn’t come from anywhere.”
Leavitt laid out a number of examples of vitriolic anti-Trump rhetoric during Monday’s briefing.