Right-Wing Accusations of Left-Wing Violence After Trump Incident Spark Debate

(Photo illustration by The Bulwark / Photo: Getty)

An apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night has triggered a wave of right-wing accusations blaming Democrats and “the left” for fostering a culture of political violence.

These claims have been leveled by prominent figures across conservative media and the Trump administration, including:

• Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who asserted that there is an “assassination culture” within the Democratic Party.
• Former Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who equated Democratic rhetoric such as “heads need to roll” with incitement to violence.
• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who accused the media of complicity by being “overly critical and calling the president horrible names.”

Conservative commentator Batya Ungar-Sargon, host of NewsNation, also contributed to the narrative in a Substack post, falsely asserting that the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was “funded by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.”

In reality, the federal fraud indictment against the SPLC does not support this claim. The indictment alleges that an informant paid by the SPLC—receiving approximately $270,000 over eight years—was part of an online chat group that helped coordinate transportation for attendees of the 2017 rally. However, the indictment does not claim the rally was a hoax or setup, nor does it link the SPLC to the violence that resulted in the death of a counterprotester.

Ungar-Sargon and others have also cited a September 2025 YouGov poll suggesting that liberals are more likely than conservatives to justify political violence. Among respondents under 45, 26% of liberals versus 7% of conservatives agreed that violence is sometimes acceptable for political ends. However, the poll was conducted immediately after the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and subsequent data from the same survey revealed that both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to view political violence as a “very big problem” following high-profile attacks on their own side.

Other polling paints a different picture. A late September 2025 NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that 31% of Republicans and 28% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track.” The framing of such questions significantly influences responses: when asked if “violence is often necessary to create social change,” more liberals agreed, but when asked if “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” twice as many Trump supporters as opponents responded affirmatively.

When examining real-world violence, conservative media outlets like The Babylon Bee—a satirical website—have consistently attributed such incidents to left-wing actors, despite a lack of evidence supporting these claims.

Fox News has yet to respond to requests for comment on these accusations.