A California man was charged in federal court on Monday with allegedly seeking to kill President Donald Trump at a gala dinner in a Washington hotel on Saturday night. Cole Tomas Allen faces two other criminal charges in connection with the thwarted attack at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
To Mr. Trump’s supporters, the incident is more evidence of a rising tide of left-wing violence. They accuse Democratic leaders and members of the media who rail against the president of creating a permission structure for extremists. And while the link between rhetoric and action isn’t straightforward, political violence experts point to a recent uptick in left-wing extremist attacks after years in which far-right extremists posed a far more deadly threat to the public and to government officials. This uptick includes the killing of a health insurance chief executive in New York in December 2024 and the killing of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing commentator, on a Utah college campus last September.
Mr. Trump has now been the target of at least three assassination attempts, including a July 2024 shooting at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the presidential campaign. Two months later, a gunman was arrested at a club where Mr. Trump was golfing and later convicted of seeking to kill him. This past February, a man armed with a shotgun and a fuel can was fatally shot outside Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Why We Wrote This
An uptick in left-wing extremist attacks, including against President Donald Trump, comes after years in which right-wing attacks were far more prevalent. But categorizing acts of political violence is complex, with individuals often acting on personal motives that don’t easily map onto ideological or partisan labels.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt drew a line between these and other incidents and what she described as a “left-wing cult of hatred” against Mr. Trump. “Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence,” she said at a news briefing.
Democratic leaders have broadly condemned Saturday’s attempted shooting, calling all acts of political violence unacceptable. Some Democrats also note that Mr. Trump himself frequently uses inflammatory and even violent political rhetoric.
And categorizing acts of political violence is complex. Individuals might act on motives that don’t always map onto ideological or partisan labels and are freighted with personal mythologies, refracted through internet memes and online conspiracies.
No clear answers have emerged as to the motivation, political or personal, of Thomas Crooks, the young man who wounded Mr. Trump at the 2024 rally in Pennsylvania before being killed by security officials. Tyler Robinson, the man accused of fatally shooting Mr. Kirk last year, appears not to have had strong partisan beliefs or to have become radicalized, according to friends who spoke to The Washington Post, though he apparently objected to Mr. Kirk’s anti-transgender politics.
Before he tried to storm the dinner on Saturday, Mr. Allen sent a “manifesto” to family members in which he referred to Mr. Trump as a traitor. He offered apologies to those who might be caught in the violence and mixed theology and politics in rebuttals of his imagined critics.
Such texts can be read as cries for attention during a personal crisis, rather than political statements, say analysts. Would-be political killers often face mental health challenges, says Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies democracy and conflicts. “It’s more accurate to see them not as ideological warriors, but as people who are seeking to make their lives feel bigger and more important through violence that connects to big events in the world,” she says via email.
William Braniff, a former terrorism prevention official at the Department of Homeland Security, says it’s a mistake to assume that individuals who commit such violent acts must hold extreme beliefs. In reality, their beliefs might align with a majority of Americans. “What differentiates these individuals is their willingness to use criminal violence to advance a cause that many others believe in but don’t act illegally to advance,” he says.
Recent polling has shown support among small but significant minorities on the left and right for violence that is seen as politically justified. In fact, the vast majority of poll respondents oppose political violence. But in a highly polarized society, partisans often believe that their opponents hold extreme views and are prepared to act on them, which then shapes their own perceptions of what might be merited in response.
In a 2025 AP-NORC poll, 6 in 10 Democrats and Republicans expressed concern about political violence directed at individuals and organizations aligned with their party. Only a minority expressed concern, however, about political violence directed at their opponents.
Last year, the FBI began using a new category for certain acts of violence: nihilistic extremism. This reflects a new trend in a society roiled by “profound frustration and divisiveness,” says Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University who studies terrorism. It’s “about anger and rage and just pulling down the system, not necessarily advancing the stereotypes of American politics of right or left or Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative,” he says.
Analysts caution that the uptick in left-wing political violence in 2025 is only one data point. It also raises the question of what is behind a decline in right-wing attacks or plots after more than a decade in which an average of 20 a year occurred. In an analysis, the Center for Strategic and International Studies posited that the Trump administration’s policies could be deterring right-wing extremists from resorting to violence, because they believe their concerns are being addressed.
Some conservatives have argued that young progressives who attend elite schools are increasingly susceptible to far-left political ideologies that justify violence. This argument gained traction during campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza in 2023 and 2024.
Mr. Allen, the gunman charged on Monday, is a California Institute of Technology graduate from Torrance, California, and holds a graduate degree from California State University. Similarly, Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of United Healthcare, is a prep-school valedictorian who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
Stephen Yang/New York Post/AP/File
A large-scale poll conducted by Gallup last year found that the strongest predictor of support for political violence wasn’t political affiliation or education level, however but age: Adults aged 18 to 29 were more likely than all other age groups to express such support. Heavy social media users also expressed more support for using violence to achieve a political goal. Democrats were slightly more likely than Republicans to express this view. Mr. Allen, Mr. Mangione, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Crooks at his death were all between the ages of 20 and 31.
Jim Piazza, a political scientist at Penn State University who studies political violence and extremism, says support for such violent acts varies in polls, however, depending on how you frame the question. “If you make it very specific, fewer people say yes,” he says. In his own surveys and those of others, he sees no consistent partisan bias in support of political violence. “This,” he says, “is an American problem.”