Republican reaction to Trump shooting only sows more division. Our leaders must stop it.

Violence begets violence, the old saying goes, and America is likely to suffer more of it unless we shift course in how we talk and act about our politics.

I don't know why a 20-year-old man with an AR-15-style rifle tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday evening in a volley of gunfire that left the gunman and one audience member dead and two injured.

But this, I know – violent rhetoric has been rising again in American politics in the past decade, and Trump's MAGA movement has been a driving force in that. The response to Saturday's tragedy from some of MAGA's supporters in the Republican Party has been an all-out embrace of the kind of rhetoric that prompts violence.

At a time when we should be stepping back to look at how we got here, so many are pushing forward with more of the same. Some actually celebrated the violence as an election game-changer – as if this were a game – while others reached to paint President Joe Biden as an agent provocateur for the way he talks about Trump.

Madness begets madness in American politics, and it looks like we're in for more of it.

Trump's campaign rushed to push rhetoric after assassination attempt

Consider Chris LaCivita, Trump's campaign senior adviser, who immediately tried to shift blame to Biden in this social media post Saturday : "For years, and even today, leftist activists, (Democratic) donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump. It's high time they be held accountable for it (and) the best way is through the ballot box."

That's an apparent reference to reporting last week that Biden told campaign donors in a phone call that it was "time to put Trump in the bull's-eye."

That's the kind of rhetoric both Biden and Trump need to walk away from. But LaCivita was eager to twist it into a call from Biden for violence against Trump while the investigation of the violence was ongoing.

No reasonable person would see it that way before or after Saturday's shooting. But LaCivita wasn't calling on reasonable people in that post. He's trying to turn the country up to a boil when it desperately needs to cool down.

Politicans need to do more: After Trump shooting, it's not enough for GOP, Democrats to speak against violence

Trump issued a flurry of social media posts, fundraising emails and text messages after the shooting, some calling for unity among Americans. That was needed. But Trump should follow his own advice.

He has long embraced violent rhetoric, including a call last year for the execution of Mark Milley , the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This is how Trump justified using inflammatory rhetoric in a Fox News interview in March : "If you don't use certain rhetoric, if you don't use certain words that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen."

Republican reaction to the shooting did little to put out the political fire

And how do they react when something happens?

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, told Politico this after the shooting: "President Trump survives this attack – he just won the election."

This wasn't a dazzling debate performance or a moment on the campaign trail where a candidate really connected with the voters. It was a spasm of violence with a controversial weapon of war – the kind of all-too-common event in America that Trump and Republicans have long refused to address in politics or policy.

Van Orden has seen violence. He attended the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump rally that spurred the riotous attack of the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

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Rep. Mike Collins, a Georgia Republican, called on the local district attorney in Pennsylvania in a Saturday social media post to charge Biden "for inciting an assassination."

Collins clearly has mixed feelings about political violence ‒ he has called for the criminals convicted in the Capitol riot to be released from prison and pardoned .

Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, a Georgia Republican, claimed in a social media post Sunday that "The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump."

She left out the inconvenient fact that the identified gunman was a registered Republican . Those sorts of facts don't matter to people capitalizing on political violence to sow more division in America.

What's wrong with us? Trump rally shooting breeds social media lies and sick conspiracies

American politics is heading toward something ugly, and our political leaders must stop it

Violence is not new in American politics, but it does ebb and flow. That tide is coming in again. It's a terrible sign that there is an established protocol for reacting to this sort of thing. But we did see a bipartisan showing of that after the attempt on Trump's life.

"There's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick," Biden said Saturday after being briefed by federal agencies. "It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this."

Bide n followed up Sunday with this after speaking with Trump: "An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.  Everything.  It’s not who we are as a nation.  It’s not America, and we cannot allow this to happen."

Former President Barack Obama offered this: "There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy."

And former President George W. Bush and his wife issued this statement: "Laura and I are grateful that President Trump is safe following the cowardly attack on his life."

They all sound like they're speaking to us from America's past, from a time when politicians had lively disagreements but didn't reflexively disparage anyone who disagreed with their politics. The old pitch was: I have a better approach to governing. Today's approach is too often: We must destroy our enemies.

Talk that way long enough and words lead to action. Cast every disagreement as a life-or-death struggle for power, and plenty of people will live, but some will surely die, too.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Republican reaction to Trump shooting only sows more division. Our leaders must stop it.