Trump-Inspired Violence in America

I have personally spent more time with Donald Trump than many of his advisors, and my family has also been subjected to moments of anxiety, terror or even the perception of our lives being endangered due to Trump's incitements to violence. Because of those incidents, which I have covered in detail in other sections on Notes from the Road, I decided many years ago to maintain a list of his various incitements to violence.

Trump's rhetoric has emboldened extremists, fueled hate crimes, and inspired domestic terror, while his administration's policies inflicted state-sanctioned harm on immigrants, minorities, and LGBTQ Americans. Notes from the Road documents this history in a new regularly updated list below, maintaining the most exhaustive and fact-checked record of Trump-inspired violence...both acts carried out by his followers and policies enacted under his leadership...so that history cannot be rewritten or forgotten.

October 10, 2025

Portland, Oregon A U.S. citizen named Frank Miranda was detained by plainclothes, masked ICE agents outside his workplace in Portland. The officers, who refused to identify themselves, told him he was "on an overstay"...a term used in immigration enforcemen...despite Miranda's repeated insistence that he was born in California. They violently struck him from behind, handcuffed him and held him for hours inside Portland's ICE facility before finally releasing him. His attorney, Michael Fuller, has filed a tort claim against the Department of Homeland Security seeking to uncover the rationale behind his illegal detention.

This shocking episode comes amid Donald Trump's renewed campaign to weaponize federal law enforcement against perceived "sanctuary" cities like Portland. Since returning to office, Trump has directed ICE and DHS to resume "enhanced interior enforcement" programs that blur the line between immigration policing and political intimidation. Portland, long a symbol of resistance to his authoritarianism, has once again become a testing ground for his tactics. By ordering masked agents to detain citizens without due process, Trump's administration signals a deliberate effort to provoke confrontation and fear — an echo of his first term's "Operation Legend" and his 2020 calls to "dominate" liberal cities through force.

Total Injured: 1 (and unlawfully detained)

September 28, 2025

Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. A Trump-supporting gunman who had displayed Trump 2020 signs and shared violent anti-Mormon posts drove his truck into a Latter-day Saints meetinghouse, opened fire, and set it ablaze. Four worshippers were killed and eight injured before police shot him. His online comments parroted Trump's campaign language about "fake churches" and "traitor religions," linking the attack to the climate of religious hostility normalized by Trump's rhetoric.

Total Dead: 4
Total Injured: 8

September to October 2025

Chicago, Illinois. Federal troops were deployed without the consent of Chicago to secure ICE facilities after mass protests against immigration raids. The deployments followed Trump's executive order authorizing use of the National Guard to protect "critical enforcement infrastructure." Demonstrators were beaten and tear-gassed. Local officials blamed Trump for escalating the confrontation.

September 8, 2025

Illinois. ICE launched Operation Midway Blitz, a campaign directly ordered by Trump to target immigrants in sanctuary jurisdictions. Agents raided homes and workplaces without warrants, detaining hundreds of people, including legal residents. Videos of families dragged from homes circulated widely, prompting nationwide outrage. Trump defended the raids as "restoring law and order" without evidence.

June 2025

Los Angeles, California. After Trump announced new interior enforcement targets, ICE and federal police raided multiple neighborhoods, detaining hundreds. Peaceful protests erupted downtown; Trump called protesters "criminal sympathizers." Federal agents used batons and flash-bangs, injuring journalists and bystanders. The crackdown marked a return to tactics Trump had called for publicly weeks earlier, promising to "put fear back in the hearts of illegals."

Spring to Fall 2025

United States. The Trump administration reassigned FBI and federal police personnel from other divisions to immigration enforcement, fulfilling his order to "treat every city like a border city." The policy triggered an increase in wrongful arrests and civil-rights violations, with detainees including naturalized citizens and asylum seekers. Advocacy groups documented trauma, family separation, and multiple in-custody deaths.

January - July, 2025

United States. Trump turned anti-trans policy into a governing program. On January 20 he ordered agencies to define sex strictly as biological, to roll back prior guidance protecting gender identity, and to police schools and grantees accordingly. HHS moved to unwind Section 1557 health-care protections, while a January 28 directive told agencies and funded partners to restrict access to gender-affirming care for youth and to disregard established medical standards. Education and HHS then used civil-rights investigations, funding leverage, and compliance reviews to force new rules on school sports and student services, and a same-day anti-DEI order told agencies and contractors to dismantle protections that had shielded LGBTQ people in grants, hiring, and procurement.

This second-term drive rests on Trump's first-term record: rescinding Title IX guidance for transgender students in early 2017, announcing and later enforcing a ban on open service by transgender troops, narrowing the Affordable Care Act's sex-discrimination rule in 2020 to exclude gender identity, and advancing shelter rules that let providers sort people by sex in ways that denied trans access. Across both terms, the method is the same: rewrite federal definitions, strip protections, and publicly stigmatize trans people so that exclusion becomes official policy. The point is not ambiguity; it is punishment by law and by message.

The human toll is measurable. In the years surrounding these actions, fatal violence against trans and gender-expansive people has increased in the range of roughly 30 to 40 killings per year nationwide, a minimum that undercounts misclassified cases, with Black trans women hit hardest. Non-fatal injuries are far more widespread: thousands of people each year are victims in anti-LGBTQ incidents, including assaults and intimidation, while school and health-care rollbacks push vulnerable youth out of safe systems and into crisis. Trump's policies directly create this environment by turning federal power into a megaphone for stigma and a green light for discrimination and violence.

Total Dead: 30-40/year
Total Injured: Roughly 3,000-4,000/year

January 20, 2025

Washington, DC. On his first day of his second term, Trump signed a sweeping executive order to "restore full enforcement authority" to ICE. The order reintroduced fast-track deportations, reauthorized family separations, and allowed indefinite detention without hearings. Civil-rights groups immediately tied the renewed policy to spikes in detention deaths and suicides in custody.

October 31, 2024

Pennsylvania. During a campaign event, Trump said he would "put Liz Cheney in front of a rifle and pull the trigger" while miming a gun toward the audience. The remark followed months of violent talk about political enemies. Attendees cheered and chanted "shoot her." Security analysts and law enforcement officials warned that Trump's rhetoric was again normalizing political violence.

October 16, 2024

Televised town hall. Trump described the January 6 insurrection as "a day of love" and "a historic, beautiful moment." The comment re-legitimized the rioters and encouraged renewed militia activity. Within days, extremist social-media groups tied to Trump's base began calling for "Round Two" if he lost the 2024 election.

October 15, 2024

Fox News town hall. Trump called his political opponents "the enemy from within" and proposed using the National Guard to handle them, explicitly calling his fellow Americans as enemy combatants. His remarks were echoed in armed-patriot chatrooms that began circulating plans for "neighborhood defense patrols."

October 13, 2024

Fox News interview. Trump said domestic enemies could be handled "by the military if necessary." The statement sparked immediate praise in far-right online spaces and prompted threats against members of Congress and journalists.

September 29, 2024

Pennsylvania rally. Trump told the crowd that "one really violent day" could end all crime if police were unrestrained. The audience responded with chants of "shoot them." Civil-rights groups condemned the remark as a call for state-sanctioned violence against civilians.

September 7, 2024

Wisconsin rally. Trump warned that removing migrants "will be a bloody story," explicitly invoking violence to describe deportations. His supporters online praised the "blood" metaphor, saying they were ready to fight. Border militias later referenced his quote while patrolling along the Rio Grande.

June 6, 2024

Television interview. Trump told Dr. Phil that "revenge can take time, but sometimes it's necessary," defending political retribution. Extremist groups circulated the clip as justification for violent targeting of perceived traitors.

March 16, 2024

Ohio rally. Trump said, "If I lose this election, it'll be a bloodbath for the country." His campaign later claimed he meant the auto industry, but the phrasing was received by followers as a threat of civil violence if he lost power. Hate-watch organizations logged a spike in online calls for armed revolt afterward.

March 11, 2024

Online post. Trump vowed to "free the January 6 hostages" and pardon them, equating violent insurrectionists with political prisoners. His words emboldened extremist defendants and deepened threats to judges overseeing their trials.

January 9, 2024

Washington, DC. After a court hearing on his criminal immunity claims, Trump warned of "bedlam" and "the opening of a Pandora's box" if he were prosecuted. Online militia groups reposted the clip, interpreting it as a signal for violent resistance should he be convicted.

December 16, 2023

New Hampshire rally. Trump said immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country." The remark echoed fascist-era racial purity rhetoric. Following his comments, law enforcement documented increases in assaults and vandalism targeting Latino and immigrant communities in Texas and Arizona.

December 5, 2023

Iowa town hall. Trump said he would "be a dictator only on day one" to "shut the borders and silence the media." His supporters cheered. The comment normalized autocratic power as necessary to restore order, language long tied to his framing of dissent as treason.

November 11, 2023

Veterans Day remarks. Trump vowed to "root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical-left thugs that live like vermin within our country." The use of "vermin" drew condemnation for echoing genocidal propaganda. Within days, hate groups used his phrase on posters and online calls for political cleansing.

September 29, 2023

California Republican Party convention. Trump told donors that store robbers should "expect to be shot as they leave." Within weeks, several right-wing sheriffs cited his comment to justify deadly force in property-crime arrests.

September 22, 2023

Online post. Trump suggested that in the past, "the punishment" for General Mark Milley's behavior "would have been death." His words led to a wave of online death threats against Milley and other former military officials.

August 4, 2023

Truth Social post. Trump wrote, "If you go after me, I'm coming after you!" The post coincided with a spike in threats to judges and prosecutors handling his cases. The Department of Justice later linked multiple threat cases directly to his statements.

April 27, 2023

New Hampshire rally. Trump told supporters that "enemies of the people" were trying to stop him and that "only our movement can stop them." The "enemies" included journalists, judges, and Democrats. His phrasing directly paralleled the language he used before the January 6 attack.

March 25, 2023

Waco, Texas rally. Trump opened his speech with a patriotic song performed by incarcerated January 6 defendants, then declared, "2024 is the final battle." Waco—the site of a 1993 federal siege long mythologized by extremists—was chosen intentionally, signaling to militias that violence might again be justified.

March 24, 2023

Online post. Trump warned of "death and destruction" if he were charged in Manhattan. Days later, police arrested a Trump supporter who made bomb threats against the courthouse. Prosecutors cited the former president's post as the likely trigger.

March 4, 2023

CPAC speech. Trump told the audience, "I am your retribution." The phrase became a rallying cry among his base, appearing on shirts, banners, and in extremist online spaces. It framed violence and vengeance as patriotic duties.

November 28, 2022

San Francisco, California. A conspiracy-driven intruder radicalized by pro-Trump propaganda about Democratic leaders broke into the Pelosi home and struck Paul Pelosi with a hammer, fracturing his skull. Trump had spent years branding Nancy Pelosi an enemy and amplifying narratives that cast Democratic officials as existential threats; the attacker echoed those themes when explaining his target.

August 11–12, 2022

Cincinnati, Ohio. Days after Trump denounced the FBI over the Mar-a-Lago search and cast investigators as corrupt enemies, a Trump-aligned man armed with an AR-style rifle tried to breach the FBI's field office, fled, and was killed in a standoff. His online posts praised Trump and urged violent resistance to federal law enforcement, reflecting Trump's escalated anti-FBI rhetoric.

August 2022

United States. As investigations advanced, Trump warned that terrible things would happen unless the temperature was brought down and repeatedly portrayed prosecutors and agents as monsters. Threat cases against judges and federal officials increased around his statements, with defendants citing his posts and speeches as justification.

Spring–Summer 2022

United States. Trump began publicly praising January 6 defendants as patriots and hostages, urging their release and promising pardons. Those statements were cited by extremist communities to justify renewed threats against judges, jurors, and court staff handling January 6 cases.

January–December 2021

United States. Following months of Stop the Steal agitation led by Trump, election workers across the country faced a sustained wave of threats and harassment. In Georgia, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were targeted after Trump and allies falsely accused them of ballot fraud; both were forced from their homes and into hiding as pro-Trump supporters flooded them with racist threats and doxxing.

January 6, 2021

Washington, DC. On January 6, 2021, violence incited by Donald Trump left five people dead within roughly 36 hours, and between 140 and 174 police officers injured...one of the worst assaults on American democracy in modern history. The attack on the U.S. Capitol was not spontaneous; it was the culmination of months of lies, rage, and direct instruction from a sitting president. Trump gathered his supporters near the Ellipse, repeated his false claim that the election had been stolen, and told them to "fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore." When he directed the crowd toward the Capitol, his words acted as a spark to the powder keg he had built. The mob—composed of his followers, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders—stormed through barricades, overwhelmed police, shattered windows, and halted the constitutional certification of the 2020 election.

Total Dead: 5
Total Injured: 140–174 officers (law enforcement)

As the Capitol fell under siege, Trump poured gasoline on the flames. At 2:24 p.m., as Vice President Mike Pence was being evacuated, Trump tweeted that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done," a message that instantly reverberated through the mob. Rioters began chanting, "Hang Mike Pence," constructing a gallows outside the building. Later that day, Trump released a short video telling the attackers to "go home," but even then, he framed their violence as righteous, ending the video with: "We love you. You're very special." These words validated the crowd and deepened the animating grievance that defined the day...the belief that their violence was in service to the president himself. Many rioters later cited Trump's words as justification for their actions in court.

Among the dead were Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, shot while trying to breach the Speaker's Lobby; Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who collapsed after being assaulted and later died of strokes linked to the confrontation; and three others who died amid the chaos from medical emergencies triggered by the riot. In the weeks following, four officers who defended the Capitol—Howard Liebengood, Jeffrey Smith, Kyle DeFreytag, and Gunther Hashida—died by suicide, deaths their families and colleagues have directly tied to the trauma of that day. Hundreds more officers carry permanent physical and psychological injuries.

Journalists also became targets of the violence Trump had spent years encouraging. For months he had labeled the press "the enemy of the people" and goaded his crowds to jeer, eject, and attack reporters. On January 6, that rhetoric turned lethal: journalists covering the insurrection were chased, beaten, and had their cameras smashed. A mob tore down a media platform and scrawled "Murder the Media" across a door at the Capitol.

The insurrection was the physical manifestation of Trump's words...the direct outcome of a leader who wielded disinformation, grievance, and rage as political tools. Every death, every injury, and every broken barrier at the Capitol traces back to the moment he told his followers to fight for him.

December 12, 2020

Washington, DC. Trump's call for supporters to "stop the steal" culminated in the second Million MAGA March, which devolved into street brawls. His rhetoric portraying Democrats as traitors led Proud Boys and other extremists to attack counter-protesters, stab four people, and burn Black church banners.

Total Injured: 4

November 4–7, 2020

Phoenix, Arizona. After Trump alleged a stolen election, armed supporters gathered outside the Maricopa County counting center chanting "stop the steal." His claims that "Democrats were finding ballots" inspired intimidation of election workers and reporters until police secured the area.

November 4, 2020

Detroit, Michigan. Trump's baseless fraud accusations triggered a mob of his supporters to surround the TCF Center shouting "stop the count" and banging on glass doors. Officials halted counting for safety. Trump's disinformation about urban vote theft directly spurred the confrontation.

October 22, 2020

National television debate. Trump refused to clearly condemn white supremacists and told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by." Within hours, Proud Boys online channels adopted the phrase as a slogan, using it to recruit for violent pro-Trump actions culminating in the January 6 insurrection.

September 12, 2020

Fox News interview. Trump praised the police killing of Michael Reinoehl, the suspect in a protest shooting, and said "there has to be retribution." His comment validated extrajudicial killing and signaled approval of lethal force against perceived enemies.

June–August 2020

Portland, Oregon. Trump launched "Operation Diligent Valor," deploying hundreds of federal officers against protesters. His order to "dominate the streets" led to nightly violence—agents beating civilians, abducting protesters in unmarked vans, and injuring over 140 officers and dozens of demonstrators. Trump celebrated the crackdown and falsely branded protesters as terrorists.

Total Injured: 140+ officers and dozens of demonstrators

June 1, 2020

Washington, DC. Federal and park police violently cleared peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square using tear gas and rubber bullets minutes before Trump walked to St. John's Church for a photo. Injuries were numerous. The clearing followed Trump's demand to "dominate" and use overwhelming force.

Total Injuries: 50+

May 29, 2020

Online. During nationwide protests after George Floyd's murder, Trump tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Within days, police escalations produced widely documented injuries: in Minneapolis, freelance photojournalist Linda Tirado was permanently blinded in one eye by a projectile on May 29; by June 1, press monitors had logged at least 140 police attacks on journalists since May 28; and in New York City's Mott Haven on June 4, Human Rights Watch documented at least 61 injured during a planned kettling operation. Together these early incidents illustrate how Trump's threat framed force as permissible, priming agencies for harsher crackdowns nationwide.

Total Injured: Hundreds nationwide in the first week attributable to Trump operations. (conservative estimate)

April 30, 2020

Lansing, Michigan. Trump tweeted "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" amid pandemic restrictions, encouraging defiance of state lockdowns. Days later, armed protesters entered the state Capitol, menacing lawmakers. Trump praised them as "very good people," legitimizing the threat. Months afterward, militia members plotted to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, citing Trump's words as inspiration.

April 23, 2020

Washington, DC. During a televised briefing, Trump mused about injecting disinfectant or using light inside the body to treat COVID-19. Poison-control hotlines immediately spiked with calls about cleaner exposures. His speculation caused real-world harm amid his administration's disinformation campaign.

March 2020 onward

United States. Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" and "Kung Flu," language that coincided with and fueled a nationwide surge in anti-Asian hate crimes. Federal, local, and academic data all show sharp increases in harassment and violence beginning immediately after his remarks. Studies from the University of California and the National Bureau of Economic Research found that anti-Asian hashtags and hate incidents spiked following Trump's statements.

Stop AAPI Hate recorded 10,905 incidents between March 19, 2020 and the end of 2021, including approximately 1,767 physical assaults that resulted in injuries. Attackers across the country echoed Trump's language: calling victims "Chinese virus" or "Kung Flu" as they punched, kicked, and stabbed them. In one DOJ case, a Texas man stabbed an Asian family, later admitting he believed they were responsible for spreading the virus.

The period also saw at least one legally recognized anti-Asian hate-crime homicide: New York City street vendor Yao Pan Ma, beaten in 2021 and later dying of his injuries—as well as eight widely linked deaths in the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, which targeted Asian women. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, hate-crime reports against Asians rose by more than 100 percent year-over-year, with victims often citing Trump's terminology during police interviews .

Deaths: At least 1 legally adjudicated hate-crime death (Yao Pan Ma); up to 9 widely linked (including Atlanta spa shootings).
Injuries: Estimated ≈ 1,700–1,800 nationwide (physical assaults documented by Stop AAPI Hate).

February–March 2020

United States. Donald Trump's handling of the pandemic was willful politicized negligence. He minimized the threat of COVID-19, calling it the Democrats' "new hoax." He mocked people for wearing masks, and openly pressured governors to reopen economies even as infection rates soared. He was the primary inciter of a national political movement against the scientific foundations that would have protected Americans. From the start, his administration dismantled the pandemic response team, sidelined scientists, and turned basic public-health measures into partisan loyalty tests. The result was a confused, fragmented national response that left hospitals and states competing for ventilators while the president publicly bragged that "we've done a great job" and "it will disappear like a miracle."

Researchers at Columbia University would later conclude that 130,000 to 210,000 American deaths could have been avoided with earlier and stronger federal action. Their report found that "a coordinated national response, including mask mandates and earlier lockdowns, could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives." The Lancet Commission went further, describing Trump's pandemic stewardship as "a massive policy failure" that violated "basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency." They singled out his politicization of public health: his choice to undermine experts, misrepresent data, and reward those who repeated his talking points as a core driver of preventable mortality.

Trump didn't have to pull a trigger here; he simply denied reality until it killed people. By refusing masks at rallies, cutting off WHO funding, and pressuring states to "liberate" themselves from restrictions, he transformed public health in the United States into a battlefield of identity politics. In doing so, he made a virus into a weapon of division, ensuring that tens of thousands of Americans would die needlessly for the sake of his own image.

Total Dead: 130,000–190,000 (estimated)

August 3, 2019

El Paso, Texas. A white supremacist gunman killed 23 and wounded 22 in a Walmart, publishing a manifesto that mimicked Trump's rhetoric about "invasion" at the border. Investigators found that Trump's language legitimized the shooter's ideology; victims were targeted for being Latino. The attacker was identified as Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old from Allen, Texas, who drove more than 600 miles to El Paso to carry out the mass shooting. Just before opening fire, Crusius posted a four-page screed online titled "The Inconvenient Truth," claiming his actions were "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas." His phrasing matched Trump's repeated warnings of an "invasion" from the southern border, rhetoric the president used dozens of times in campaign speeches and tweets.

Federal investigators and terrorism experts later concluded that Crusius was directly influenced by the various Trump narratives. His manifesto expressed support for Trump's immigration agenda and echoed the president's language about protecting the nation's "culture" and "heritage."

Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that Trump's use of invasion imagery had sharply increased in the months before the attack, and that the El Paso shooting demonstrated how political language portraying immigrants as invaders can normalize racist violence. The massacre remains one of the deadliest hate crimes against Latinos in U.S. history and a defining example of Trump-inspired domestic terrorism.

Total Dead: 23
Total Injured: 22

February 11, 2019

El Paso, Texas. A Trump supporter rushed the press pen and assaulted BBC cameraman Ron Skeans on the risers during a campaign rally. Trump had spent months branding reporters the enemy of the people and pointing at press pens while crowds booed, normalizing harassment and making violence against journalists feel permissible.

Total Injured: 1

August 12, 2017

Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump's response to the "Unite the Right" rally...saying there were "very fine people on both sides"...emboldened violent white nationalists. During the rally, a neo-Nazi drove into counter-protesters, killing one and injuring dozens. Trump's equivocation gave the movement renewed legitimacy. The attacker was James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old white supremacist from Ohio who had driven his gray Dodge Challenger into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators protesting the rally. The car struck dozens of people, killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist, and injuring 35 others. Witnesses described the moment as a deliberate act of terror aimed at silencing those who opposed the marchers' racist ideology.

The "Unite the Right" rally was organized by far-right leaders who explicitly framed it as a show of support for Donald Trump's presidency and his defense of Confederate monuments. Marchers carried torches, chanted "Jews will not replace us," and wore red "Make America Great Again" hats as symbols of allegiance. Trump's refusal to condemn the attackers outright, and his statement equating anti-racist demonstrators with violent extremists, was widely seen as granting moral cover to white nationalist groups. The event marked a turning point in the modern extremist movement, with many participants later citing Trump's rhetoric as inspiration for their continued radicalization and subsequent acts of violence across the country.

Total Dead: 1
Total Injured: 35

May 26, 2017

Portland, Oregon. Jeremy Christian, a Trump-supporting extremist who attended right-wing rallies and posted anti-Muslim rants praising Trump, stabbed three men who intervened as he harassed two teenage girls of color, one wearing a hijab. Two victims died and one was critically injured. Christian shouted slogans about free speech and Trump as police arrested him.

Total Dead: 2
Total Injured: 1

March 25, 2017

Huntington Beach, California. OC Weekly journalist Frank Tristan was punched by a pro-Trump demonstrator at a Make America Great Again rally. Trump's rally habit of calling out and ridiculing the press created an atmosphere where attacking journalists was portrayed as defending the movement.

Total Injured: 1

January 27, 2017

Washington, DC. Trump signed Executive Order 13769 ...the first "Muslim Ban"—blocking travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations and suspending refugee entry. The order stranded thousands in airports, triggered protests worldwide, and legitimized Islamophobic violence already rising after his 2016 campaign rhetoric depicting Muslims as threats.

January 2017

United States. Trump revoked Obama-era protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. The rollback emboldened state-level anti-trans laws and contributed to a rise in harassment and suicide attempts among trans youth. More on this above.

December 24, 2015

Dallas, Texas. A gunman attacked a Muslim-owned store, killing one person and attempting to kill four others. Witnesses and investigators described the shooter as a Trump supporter radicalized by the candidate's campaign rhetoric calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." The attack reflected a surge in hate crimes targeting Muslims and perceived Muslims that began after Trump's campaign launch in mid-2015.

According to FBI data, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by roughly 67% from 2014 to 2015—the year Trump entered the race—and assaults against Muslims in 2016 reached levels not seen since the aftermath of 9/11. Civil-rights groups documented dozens of violent assaults, arsons, and murders in which perpetrators cited Trump's language or policies as justification. At least 8 killings and over 200 reported assaults and injuries during the 2015–2017 period have been linked by researchers and prosecutors to anti-Muslim sentiment amplified by Trump's campaign and early presidency.

Total Dead: 1 (Dallas shooting victim).
Additional Deaths Nationwide: ≈8 linked to anti-Muslim hate violence (2015–2017).
Estimated Injuries: Over 200 assaults causing injury nationwide during the same period.

November 2015 – March 2016

United States. During his first presidential campaign, Trump's rallies became recurring scenes of physical violence. From the moment he told crowds to "knock the crap out of" protesters and promised to pay legal fees, assaults began erupting in arenas and fairgrounds across the country. His rallies in Birmingham, Alabama (November 21 2015); St. Louis, Missouri (March 11 2016); Chicago, Illinois (March 11 2016, canceled amid clashes); Dayton, Ohio (March 12 2016); and Tucson, Arizona (March 19 2016) all featured assaults and arrests that police and witnesses attributed directly to Trump's inflammatory remarks.

At least a dozen individual victims were injured inside or just outside venues—punched, kicked, dragged, or pepper-sprayed by Trump supporters while security stood by. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, a white Trump supporter punched a Black protester in the face while the candidate onstage said, "Get them out." In St. Louis, five protesters were hospitalized after being punched and kicked by rally attendees chanting Trump slogans. In Tucson, a man in a "Make America Great Again" hat sucker-punched a Latino protester while another kicked him as police restrained the victim. Civil-rights monitors from the SPLC and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights reported at least 30–40 protester injuries and over 20 arrests for assault or disorderly conduct during this five-month stretch, almost all tied to Trump's live calls for violence.

Journalists, legal analysts, and the courts treated these episodes as early evidence of the culture of physical intimidation that would define his political movement. The normalization of aggression at Trump events...cheered and sometimes rewarded by the candidate...set a precedent for mob violence in American political life, echoed years later in the January 6 attack.

Injuries: Estimated 30–40 protesters and journalists assaulted or injured at Trump rallies (Nov 2015–Mar 2016), per SPLC , police reports, and press accounts from that time.

March 11, 2016

Chicago, Illinois. A Trump rally at the University of Illinois was canceled due to violent clashes inside and outside the venue. Trump's speeches had for weeks stoked anger against immigrants and Black activists, and the chaotic scenes previewed the political violence that would define his presidency.

March 1, 2016

Louisville, Kentucky. At the Kentucky International Convention Center, Trump repeatedly told the crowd to "get 'em out of here" as protesters were identified. Audience members then assaulted three protesters: Kashiya Nwanguma (shoved through the crowd), Molly Shah (shoved and jostled), and Henry Brousseau (punched in the stomach). A civil lawsuit—Nwanguma v. Trump—named Trump and rally attendees including white nationalist Matthew Heimbach and Alvin Bamberger, and a federal judge found it plausible that Trump's directives incited the crowd's use of force. The Sixth Circuit later recounted that audience members "assaulted, pushed and shoved" the plaintiffs as Trump issued the commands.

Injuries: At least 3 (Kashiya Nwanguma, Molly Shah, Henry Brousseau).

February 22, 2016

Las Vegas, Nevada. At a campaign rally at South Point Arena, Trump pointed to a protester being escorted out and told the crowd, "I'd like to punch him in the face." Supporters cheered, and several began shoving and striking demonstrators as security led them away. Reporters on site from Reuters, AP, and BuzzFeed captured multiple instances of Trump supporters hitting or choking protesters while shouting Trump's name. Police intervened in at least two separate brawls on the arena floor and in the hallway outside.

That evening's violence became one of the earliest and clearest examples of Trump's direct verbal incitement producing immediate assaults. Human-rights monitors and the Southern Poverty Law Center later logged the Las Vegas rally among a dozen events in early 2016 where Trump's remarks preceded crowd violence. Local hospital reports and police statements cited five individuals treated for minor to moderate injuries, including a woman who suffered a concussion and a man with a broken nose. The event set the tone for a string of similar attacks that followed in Fayetteville, St. Louis, and Tucson, establishing physical aggression as a normalized feature of Trump's campaign culture.

Injuries: Approximately 5 confirmed (Las Vegas rally), within a broader pattern of 30–40 injuries at Trump rallies between Nov 2015 and Mar 2016.

February 1, 2016

Iowa. Trump told his crowd to "knock the hell out of" anyone preparing to throw tomatoes, promising to pay their legal fees. The comment was widely covered and replayed in later incidents where his followers attacked protesters.

November 21, 2015

Birmingham, Alabama. During a Trump rally, local activist Mercutio Southall Jr. was punched, kicked, and choked by Trump supporters as security moved to remove him. Trump had just ordered the crowd to remove the protester and later told Fox News that Southall "should have been roughed up." The incident became an early, on-camera example of Trump's rhetoric cueing immediate violence against a named target.

Injuries: 1 (Mercutio Southall Jr.).

October 7, 2016

Washington, DC. The world heard Donald Trump in his own words. In the 2005 recording, captured while he spoke with TV host Billy Bush on the set of Access Hollywood, Trump bragged openly about committing sexual assault: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women]...I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait." Then, laughing, he added the line that would come to define the scandal: "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything." The remarks were a confession, delivered casually, as though assault were simply a perk of fame. When the tape became public, Trump dismissed the comments as "locker-room talk", refusing to apologize for the underlying behavior. The language itself was a performance of entitlement...the voice of a man so insulated by power that he could describe sexual violence as charm.

The tape normalized aggression and degradation as political theater. Millions of his supporters brushed off the words, framing them as humor or bravado, and in doing so helped move the boundaries of public decency. The episode reinforced what dozens of women had already alleged...that Trump's abuse was not hypothetical. At least two women, including People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff and reality contestant Summer Zervos, later described assaults that mirrored his boast: sudden, unwanted kissing and groping without consent. Others, from models to employees, told similar stories spanning decades. Rather than express remorse, Trump threatened his accusers, mocked them onstage, and vowed to sue. The "Access Hollywood" tape thus became a window into a broader pattern...a man who viewed women as objects of conquest, and a political movement willing to excuse it.

July 2016

Cleveland, Ohio. Trump's Republican National Convention speech called for "law and order" and depicted immigrants as criminals. Hate-crime researchers later identified the speech as a turning point, marking a measurable surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Latino attacks carried out by self-identified Trump supporters.

June 16, 2015

New York, New York. At his campaign launch, Trump said Mexico was sending rapists and criminals. Within days, Latinos across the U.S. were assaulted by attackers who repeated his phrases. The speech established the central theme of his politics—criminalizing minorities and legitimizing vigilante violence.

1992–1997

New York and Palm Beach. Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Amy Dorris, and others accused Trump of groping or forcibly kissing them without consent. Trump denied all allegations. These incidents illustrated a pattern of personal violence toward women that paralleled the coercive tone of his political persona decades later.

1989

New York, New York. In the days following the brutal assault and rape of a white jogger in Central Park, Donald Trump inserted himself into one of the most racially charged cases in modern New York history...not as a public servant or civic leader, but as an amplifier of fury. At the height of the panic, with police under immense pressure and the city gripped by tabloid sensationalism, Trump spent $85,000 on full-page advertisements in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post, and New York Newsday. The ads screamed in bold print: "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!"

The timing was devastating. Five Black and Latino teenagers...Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise...had just been arrested and interrogated for hours without attorneys or parents present. Coerced confessions were extracted, and their faces were plastered across every front page. Trump's ads appeared days later, fanning the flames of fear and resentment, and effectively calling for their execution before trial. The language of his message was unmistakable: a demand for retribution couched in nostalgia for a "stronger" era of policing, one in which due process was secondary to punishment.

The fallout was immediate. Trump's ads intensified public outrage, hardened racial divides, and influenced the climate of the coming trial. The teenagers...dubbed the "Central Park Five"...were vilified as symbols of urban decay and criminal menace. Years later, jurors from the case would acknowledge that Trump's advertisements were impossible to ignore during deliberations. His intervention didn't merely express an opinion; it shaped the atmosphere of vengeance that surrounded the proceedings.

When DNA evidence and a confession from another man, Matias Reyes, ultimately exonerated the five men in 2002, Trump refused to apologize. Instead, he doubled down, insisting in 2014 that the settlement they received from the City of New York was "a disgrace" and that they were "no angels." Even as the men rebuilt their lives, Trump continued to portray them as guilty...a refusal that revealed more than stubbornness. It reflected the same punitive worldview that would later drive his political campaigns: a belief that punishment equals justice, that minorities are to be feared, and that law and order means domination, not fairness.

Trump's 1989 ad campaign was an early rehearsal for the politics of vengeance and spectacle that would define his presidency. It positioned him as the voice of white grievance and urban retribution, a role he would reprise decades later in his calls for police crackdowns, Muslim bans, and mass deportations. The Central Park case exposed his instincts with brutal clarity...the reflex to inflame, to scapegoat, and to seek power through the public humiliation of others. It was not an aberration; it was the prototype.

Early 1980s–1990s

New York, New York. From the earliest days of his career, Donald Trump built his business empire atop patterns of racial exclusion that would later define his political persona. In the 1970s and 1980s, business records, court filings, and first-hand testimony from Black tenants and former employees revealed that the Trump Organization routinely discriminated against Black renters in its New York apartment complexes. Trump's buildings were often accused of keeping "coded" tenant lists...marking applications from African Americans with the letter "C" for "colored"...and instructing building superintendents to lie about unit availability when prospective Black tenants inquired.

In 1973, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a landmark civil rights lawsuit against Donald Trump, his father Fred Trump, and the Trump Organization, alleging "a pattern and practice of racial discrimination" across dozens of properties in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Federal investigators had sent Black and white testers to Trump buildings; Black applicants were turned away while white applicants were immediately shown apartments. Trump denied wrongdoing, famously telling reporters that the suit was "ridiculous" and part of a "government witch hunt," rhetoric that prefigured the deflection and grievance politics of his later campaigns.

Under mounting evidence, Trump settled the case in 1975 without admitting guilt, but the consent decree required his company to change its practices, advertise openings to minority tenants, and report regularly to the federal government. Yet by the 1980s, reports of ongoing discrimination persisted. Former employees described racist slurs within the company, with one Black worker recalling that Trump told managers he wanted to avoid "renting to Blacks" because they would "drag down the neighborhood."

These early patterns of exclusion foreshadowed Trump's later political narrative...a worldview built on racial scapegoating, fear, and hierarchy. His public language shifted from real estate code words to political slogans, but the underlying message remained: whiteness connoted order and safety, while Blackness and brownness represented threat and disorder. The same instincts that once guided who was welcome in a Trump building evolved into the rhetoric that would animate his rallies decades later...portraying immigrants, minorities, and protesters as dangers to be contained or expelled. The 1973 discrimination case was not an anomaly; it was the origin story of a political movement that weaponized prejudice for power.