The fuse of political violence has been burning across America long before a would-be assassin wounded former President Donald Trump. Members of Congress have been shot, and a man attacked another lawmaker’s staff with a baseball bat. A private investigator put a tracking device on a Nevada mayor’s personal vehicle, and she still doesn’t know why. In upstate New York, a man threw a dummy pipe bomb through the front window of a candidate for county clerk’s home. The attempt to kill Trump horrified people across the political spectrum but came out of a political climate where violence has long punctuated intense partisanship.
