The following is the transcript of an interview with University of Chicago professor Robert Pape that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sept. 14, 2025.
MAJOR GARRETT: Welcome back. We’re going to take a closer look at the problem of political violence in America. And we’re joined now, I’m glad to say, by University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape. He’s the founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Professor, it’s great to have you with us. Thanks for joining us. What are the trend lines, and what is the key terminology you want my audience to understand?
PROFESSOR ROBERT PAPE: We are now in a watershed moment for what I call the era of violent populism in America. This era is defined, first and foremost, by two factors: Number one, a rising tide of political violence on both the right and the left. And just think, and I want to go back to 2002 just think of the attack- the assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader of the House, missed her, almost killed her husband. The attempt on Brett Kavanaugh, conservative Supreme Court Justice. Two attempts on Republican candidate Donald Trump, and then the- in Minnesota just a few months ago, not just attempts, but actual assassinations of Democratic leaders. Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania. And now, we see Charlie Kirk assassinated. And what we are seeing is this clear rising trend in numbers of attacks, side-by-side with that, though, we are also seeing a rising tide, a groundswell of support for political violence on both the right and the left that corresponds with this rising trend of political violence on both the right and the left. Our Center at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, we have been conducting highly reliable national surveys on political violence- the support for political violence among Americans for over four years. We started this in the summer of 2021. Our most recent survey in- survey in May found higher levels of support for political violence on both the right and the left than we have ever seen, and that’s one of the reasons why I rang the alarm bell with that big op-ed in the New York Times in June saying we’re on the cusp of major political violence, and I’m sorry to say we’re now right in the grip of violent populism.
MAJOR GARRETT: And in that survey data, is it that people who respond to your survey say, to reconcile myself to the political outcome I want- I will be willing to resort to violence? Is that the key connection point?
: The key connection is the particular political grievance. So we asked, just give you an example, 39% of Democrats say they agree that the use of force is justified to remove Donald Trump from the presidency. When we go deeper to probe what do they mean by use of force? 55% are talking about assassinations. They’re talking about lethal uses of force. That’s why we use that term. On the right, we also asked that very same survey. We found 24% of Republicans agree that Donald Trump is justified in using the US military to suppress democratic protesters. So these are very specific questions. We have a whole slew of these questions so that we really can speak with great precision about what are the grievances that people want to say use of force is justified. We know what the meaning of that term is, and then we can see Democrat-Republican in the cross-tabs.
MAJOR GARRETT: Does your research buttress the point that both Senator Lankford and Senator Coons made, which is the internet is an accelerant and an amplifier?
: It’s an accelerant, but it’s not the root cause. So, studying this problem now for five years, I found that just as around the world, big social change, it drives political violence. We see this in other countries around the world, and- but the details of the change vary. We are now moving for the first time in our country’s 250-year history, from a white majority democracy, to a white minority democracy. In 1990, we were 76% non-Hispanic white. Today, we’re 57% non-Hispanic white. It will be another 10 years, maybe 15 if we deport a lot of those undocumented, illegal immigrants, before we make the transition to a truly white-minority democracy. Well, this generational change has happened. It started about 10 years ago, with the real tipping point generation and corresponds with the rise of Donald Trump, why his issue of immigration is meteoric, why it’s morphed from immigration meaning stop people crossing the border to now deporting mass numbers of people, because there are people on the right who want to stop or reverse this, and also the virulent reaction to Donald Trump on the left- on parts of the left, who want to keep this going. This is really the taproot, and that’s why we need to expect- this left to its own devices will get worse and be with us for 10 years.
MAJOR GARRETT: So, this is a demographic story that is creating a political backlash that gets amplified and accelerated online. Do I have that right?
: You’ve got it exactly right. And these are why it’s not the internet is not important. It’s a reinforcing factor. And there is –
MAJOR GARRETT: In other words, it’s too simplistic to say it’s the internet?
: Exactly. Because-that’s why- a few years ago, people challenged my findings, and said, oh no, no, we’ll just deplatform people. So the problem here is just the internet, so we’re going to deplatform X, Y, and Z. We deplatformed X, Y, and Z, and you know what? Didn’t miss a beat. And the reason is because, yes, it is an additional- it’s like throwing gasoline on the fire, but the internet is not the fire itself. There’s something going on, which is really radicalizing our politics. And I’m sorry to say, this is a story that we’ve seen around the world, in other countries, other times. And so this is- this is the social change leading to radicalized politics that changes winners and losers in our society for real, and that’s leading to political violence.
MAJOR GARRETT: Professor, it has always been a hallmark of this country, we have sort of thought about ourselves as having this experiment that has lots of differences of opinion, spasms of violence, but in the end, we reconcile and we move forward. Are you any more or less optimistic about that and that underlying assumption about the core ability of America than you were previously?
: The future is in our hands. This is not locked-in with destiny. That said, if we do nothing, this will keep getting worse. The number one thing we have to do is we need our political leaders to step up. And we just saw an instance of that, just previously, where we have Senators from both sides of the aisle making a joint video appearance. Well, that’s really quite- to condemn violence. That’s important, because the leaders can restrain their own constituents. When they bad-mouth the other side’s constituents, our data shows that makes everything worse. That’s the worst of all possible worlds, because it produces defiance. We need to step that up. What would step that up? A summit between President Trump, Governor Newsom, and Governor Pritzker, a public session where they, all together, condemn political violence.
MAJOR GARRETT: Professor Pape, I’m very glad you’re here. Modeling behavior matters in many contexts, in life, political, and otherwise. Thank you very much. We’ll be back in just a moment.
