AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

As we continue to look at Saturday’s shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, we’re joined by the journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College, has been tracking the rise of political violence in the United States. His latest book is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Professor Sharlet, thanks for joining us again. Tell us what you’ve been tracking since Saturday night.

JEFF SHARLET: I’ve been most interested at the sort of the uses and abuses to which MAGA and other factions of the right have put this narrative, not so much the actual facts of who this shooter, Cole Allen, is, but the stories they’re telling about him and the stories they’re telling about Trump and how he responded, and using that as part of the sort of the ongoing project of what you can only describe as a kind of deification of Trump as this man who somehow transcends worldly effects.

AMY GOODMAN: Over the past two days, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the suspected shooter was anti-Christian. This is Trump appearing on Fox News Sunday.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The guy is a sick guy, when you read his manifesto. He hates Christians. That’s one thing for sure. He hates Christians, a hatred.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Sharlet, can you respond?

JEFF SHARLET: It’s a startling and, on his part, savvy claim. He, of course, had access to what we believe to be — it’s not even really a manifesto; it’s just a statement of intent by this man, Cole Allen — and was able to characterize it as anti-Christian, which was then picked up across right-wing media and across as well as legacy and mainstream media, declaring this as an anti-Christian attack. So, when you come to read the document itself, it’s kind of startling to see that, in fact, Cole Allen understood his mission in very explicitly Christian terms, and not just Christian terms, but terms familiar if you’ve ever read the manifestos of abortion clinic bombers, the idea that you can’t turn the other cheek when it comes time to save the lives of the innocent, that the Christian imperative to turn the other cheek doesn’t apply if lives are on the line.

And he goes further than that. He goes into deeper specificity. In a list of sort of five objections that could be made to his awful attack, he offers what are, in his mind, his justifications. And one of them is “Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” And it’s a paraphrase of a biblical passage that appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the idea of render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s. The Christians are called upon to defer to the authority of the land. Well, he comes with an argument that says, “Yeah, but that’s not so when the leaders of the land are breaking the law,” because the land — the Caesar there stands for the law of the land. And since these administration officials are, in his mind, breaking the law — as they are, in fact — that he sees this as justification.

This is almost the exact same justification used by Vance Boelter, the assassin, the far-right, the fascist assassin in Minnesota, who killed state legislators. This is the — much the same rhetoric that you’ll find in the old language of the Army of God, the militia that would attack abortion clinics. He’s turning it to different ends. But the last thing you can say is this is anti-Christian.

AMY GOODMAN: In a Sunday opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald headlined “America is burning with political violence. It’s a fire that Trump keeps stoking,” a former White House staffer, Cory Alpert, writes, quote, “Political violence has risen sharply over the past decade — more so than at any of the five moments in US history where a sitting president has been shot, leaving four dead and one gravely wounded. … Donald Trump has been the leading accelerant of that rise, throwing fuel on the fire at every opportunity.” Professor Sharlet, can you respond?

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah. I mean, it’s indisputable. And it’s, in fact, the point that far-rightists and fascists make themselves, pointing to the number of assassination attempts he survived, which is either three or four or five, depending on how you count it, and they can debate amongst themselves. But I think what it points us to is we’re losing the usefulness of the term “political violence.” The better term is “violence.” As you opened the show, what do we call — this is violence. This was a — this was attempted murder. And we can oppose it plainly and simply as that. What do we call the boat strike, with which you opened the show, that was barely reported yesterday? Is that political violence? It’s murder.

I think what Trump, Trumpism has done has given us a spectacle politics that has gotten us far past what — we’re hearing all these cries: “We mustn’t normalize political violence.” That ship has sailed. It is normal. As evidence, you can see the number of people who are boasting online, “Well, I didn’t really pay attention to this. I was watching something else. I was out being normal.” This idea that this is just a humdrum, the boat strike doesn’t need to be reported, the shooting in Indiana, as you mentioned, barely reported, it’s just the weather. And I think that is the spectacle of Trumpism, and Trump knows that that weather is good for fascism.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about this issue of gun violence? You just heard Congressmember Khanna calling for a commission on political violence. Where does the easy availability of guns, whatever a shooter’s political views are, fit into this story, Jeff?

JEFF SHARLET: You know, whatever the number — the latest number is 450 million, maybe 500 million, guns in civilian hands in the United States, guns so readily available, such powerful guns. We know this is true. In situations of domestic violence, if there’s guns in the house, they’re more likely going to be used, and there’s going to be murders committed. If there’s guns there, someone is going to take whatever logic, whatever grievance they have, and apply a gun to it. A gun, in the sort of the American vernacular, is the cure-all for whatever problem, whatever ails you.

I think, again, when you look at the so-called manifesto of this shooter, what’s striking about it is that so much of it is fairly conventional. People have been combing over his social media. Nothing really stands out. He was a fan of very many popular liberal and — mostly liberal, some left websites. And yet, then, there’s that moment where he says, “OK, but I’m going to add a gun to this, because I’ve got a gun.” And even through the manifesto, you see him following the logic of his own gun. He says, “OK, I’m going to try and not harm innocent bystanders,” or whatever he says. But then, at the end, he says, “But I will go through anybody. I’ll kill anybody to achieve this.” Gun in hand, he lets the gun lead him. And it’s — I mean, we saw it on video, this man charging, like he thinks he’s an action hero in a movie, with his gun into the ballroom, a fool on a deadly errand.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, what is being made of, in social media, this alleged shooter saying the man that they now are going to be arraigning today, he was going after Trump administration officials, except for Kash Patel — right? — the head of the FBI?

JEFF SHARLET: I have no idea what his intention was, but what we’re seeing — and I get it — the temptation is to read this as a joke, like he’s owning Kash Patel. And, you know, that’s as much the normalization of political violence, of gun violence, as — I’m thinking of T-shirts and bumper stickers by gun zealots with sexual innuendos around bullets that are too grotesque to say on the air. To make a joke of guns is to diminish any possibility we ever have of reducing their absolute prevalence, everydayness. They are normalized in our lives. So I think that’s what’s happening. And I think that’s the kind of — that’s Trumpism, even if it’s an anti-Trumper saying it. It’s the idea that all of this is just entertainment.

AMY GOODMAN: Last question, we just have 30 seconds. We’re going on to Sister Helen Prejean responding to the Trump administration reinstating firing squad. But the shooting took place at the Washington Hilton. The venue was, of course, the venue of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. How does this shooting fit into what you describe as the slow civil war that you believe is occurring in the United States, Jeff?

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah, I think with the — the slow civil war is best understood as kind of almost sort of like episodic, in the same way that what played out on Saturday night was, as my colleague Anthea Butler calls it, the story arc of the week in Trumpism. And it will be forgotten by next week. That’s why it’s important to remember, to keep tally of all these violent incidents. And by violent incidents, I don’t mean shooters, just shooters like this, although certainly them, but to put them in one long list that includes wars in Iran and Venezuela, all the bombs sent to Gaza, to understand that this — to put them into a conversation with the war on trans folks. All those are part of this slow civil war. This is just one more episode.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Sharlet, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College. His latest book, _The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Coming up, death by firing squad. We’ll speak to Sister Helen Prejean. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “First Light” by Matthew Alexander Thurtell and Vincenzo Bellomo.