On Friday’s edition of Amanpour & Co. on PBS, host Christiane Amanpour introduced journalist Hari Sreenivasan’s segment with UC-San Diego professor and self-styled extremism expert Barbara Walter. Despite a spate of recent left-wing violence -- from burning Tesla and Waymo cars by anti-Musk and anti-ICE rioters, to the anti-Semitic killings and fire-bombings, the focus was almost entirely on blaming the Republican Party for the violent surge.
Amanpour claimed that “Another feature of the MAGA decade is an alarming rise in political violence,” but at least noted the attempt on Donald Trump’s own life. Sreenivasan mentioned the killing of the two Israeli Embassy workers in D.C. and the attack on the home of Jewish Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, but left out the anti-Semitic motivations.
Meanwhile, his guest Walter emphasized right-wing domestic terror, complaining that until January 6, “Nobody wanted to talk about the rise of white nationalist violence. Nobody wanted to talk about attacks on synagogues and African Americans and Latinos….”
Sreenivasan blamed Republicans for political violence both past and future, turning a couple of deleted X posts by Utah Sen. Mike Lee riffing on the horrific political murder of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, into a harbinger of future terror.
SREENIVASAN: ….And I wonder, you know, what is the impact of that kind of rhetoric where that becomes, I guess almost normal? What does that do to overall the climate of political violence?
Walter actually praised Lee for retracting those statements but kept the blame on Republicans for fostering an atmosphere where “violence starts to be normalized,” stating “You don't want progressive policies in your state, you don’t want the Democrats in power, and you're being told for -- from your political leaders that violence is potentially justified.”
Offensively, Sreenivasan wondered why Republicans still had to kill even when they were winning elections.
SREENIVASAN: ....you had a recent Substack that was fascinating. It said, “Why the Right Turns to Violence, Even When it’s Winning.” And you said in there, today's Republicans are at peak power. They control all three branches of the federal government. They've appointed the majority of judges. They've reshaped election laws at the state level. They have the Supreme Court. They have the keys to the Cadillac and can cruise where they want. Why kill?" So, why are Republicans taking these acts when they have the keys to the Cadillac, as you say?
The equally obnoxious Walter came up with a discombobulated (and outdated) explanation of why Republicans are murderers, which matched up neatly with the Democratic Party platform.
WALTER: Because they know their power is fragile. They understand that they have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. [Fact check: Trump won the popular vote in 2024 against Kamala Harris, making the actual figure seven out of the last nine]....Most Americans, this includes citizens of red states, support stricter gun control laws. Most people in America support the right to choose….
Walter went on to claim that the violence “today is coming overwhelmingly from the far-right,” but then slid right over evidence that more Democrats than Republicans support violent acts to remove their partisan opponents.
SREENIVASAN: You know, there have been some recent survey data about how comfortable people are with political violence. This is according to the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. The most recent survey in May revealed that about 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency. About 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump's agenda. And that these numbers more than doubled since last fall. What does that say to you?
After hearing all that, Walter still blamed the GOP for stirring up violence among the American public, “….The January 6th insurrectionists, they've watched them be pardoned.”