The Memo: Bomb attacks expose festering divisions 

Partisan enmity, incendiary rhetoric and polarization were under a more intense spotlight than ever Wednesday after crude explosive devices were sent to several leading Democratic politicians and to CNN.

President Trump, addressing the crisis briefly at the White House, insisted that “we have to unify, we have to come together.”

But Democrats and liberal commentators reacted with scorn to that message, pointing the finger at Trump for injecting toxins into the nation’s political bloodstream.

{mosads}Trump was accused of encouraging violence at his rallies during the 2016 presidential race, on one occasion pledging to pay the legal fees of anyone who were to “knock the crap” out of protestors. 

He has consistently called his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton — one of the targets of this week’s attacks — “crooked.” And he has blasted the news media as the “enemy of the American people.”

During his White House remarks on Wednesday, however, he said that “acts and threats of political violence have no place in the United States of America.” He also described the attacks as “egregious” and “abhorrent.”

There were other calls on unity from both sides. 

Former Vice President Joe Biden tweeted that “this country has to come together. This division, this hatred, this ugliness has to end.” 

2012 GOP presidential nominee — and current Senate candidate — Mitt Romney said that “hate acts follow hate speech. It is past time for us to turn down and tune out the rabid rhetoric.”

But that looks to be easier said than done. 

Polarization in the United States has been growing for decades. Trump’s rise was, at the least, a symptom as much as a cause of chasms that have been widened by numerous factors: the rise of talk radio as far back as the 1990s, the self-perpetuating ideological dynamics of social media and an overall rise in partisan sentiment. 

According to a Pew Research Center report from 2014 — a year before Trump even began running for president — 45 percent of people who expressed mainly conservative views said they would be “unhappy” if a family member married a Democrat. Thirty-one percent of people who expressed mainly liberal views said they would be equally displeased if a family member wed a Republican.  

In the same report, a full 50 percent of people who held “consistently conservative” views — and 35 percent of people who held “consistently liberal” views — said it was important for them to live in a place “where most people share my political views.” 

Even on Wednesday, the calls for unity were soon swallowed up by appeals that fell squarely along partisan lines.

The two leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), issued a joint statement saying that Trump’s words would “ring hollow until he reverses his statements that condone acts of violence.”

Meanwhile, some hard-right figures and media provocateurs who support Trump pushed the unsupported idea that the attacks could have been “false flag” operations intended to engender sympathy for Democrats and the media.

Other, more mainstream conservatives were quick to note that the specter of political violence was not something that was only directed at figures on the left.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and seriously injured last year in Alexandria, Va., after a gunman attacked a group of congressional Republicans who were practicing for a charity baseball game. The shooter in that case, James Hodgkinson, held left-wing political views. He died after a shootout with police. 

Trump went ahead with a scheduled rally in Mosinee, Wis., on Wednesday evening. He delivered a somewhat more low-key oration than usual, calling the apparent use of bombs “an attack on our democracy itself” that “must be fiercely opposed and firmly prosecuted.” But he also insisted that the media should “stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often false attacks and stories.” 

Former President Obama and Clinton were the most prominent targets of the pipe bombs on Tuesday and Wednesday. Devices were addressed to both of their homes but were intercepted at screening facilities.

Other Democratic politicians targeted with the suspect devices included Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and former Attorney General Eric Holder. 

The package intended for delivery to Holder was returned, but to an office affiliated with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman. A crude bomb, discovered on Monday, was also sent to liberal donor and billionaire George Soros. 

A reportedly near-identical bomb was received at CNN’s facility at the Time Warner Center in New York City on Wednesday. It was addressed to John Brennan, the CIA director under Obama and a prominent Trump critic. The device’s discovery led to an evacuation of the building, the beginning of which occurred during a live broadcast from that location.

Trump has consistently lambasted CNN as “fake news,” and signs and merchandise attacking the network are often seen at his rallies. Outside a rally earlier this month in Erie, Pa., T-shirts proclaiming “CNN Sucks!” and rendering its full name as “Communist News Network” were on sale at one stall close to the venue. (Such stalls are private enterprises, not affiliated with the president’s political network.)

CNN President Jeff Zucker, who has often tangled with the president in the past, issued a statement in which he blasted the White House for a “total and complete lack of understanding … about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.” 

Zucker complained that Trump and his White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, had “shown no comprehension of that.”

But such statements, justified or not, themselves prove that the tide of polarization will not easily be turned back. And that leaves people on all points of the political spectrum fearful about what might come next.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.