Trump, since 2015, has systematically employed threatening rhetoric, praise for violence, and mockery of assault victims as a core communication and political strategy. This pattern of behavior is not random; it targets political opponents, judicial figures, journalists, and private citizens to intimidate adversaries, rally his base, and delegitimize institutions.
The primary actor is Trump, in his capacities as a presidential candidate, U.S. President, and post-presidential political figure. The targets are a wide and expanding group, including-
- Political Rivals- Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi.
- Judicial & Legal Figures- Prosecutors (Alvin Bragg), judges (Juan Merchan), and witnesses (Michael Cohen).
- Media & Journalists- Outlets (CNN, MSNBC) and individuals (Ali Velshi, “enemy of the people”).
- Government Officials- Election workers, civil servants, and law enforcement.
- Private Citizens- Protestors and victims of violence (Paul Pelosi).
The behavior manifests as a chronological pattern of escalating verbal and visual intimidation. Key examples include-
- Encouraging Supporter Violence (2016)- Telling rally-goers to “knock the crap out of” protestors and offering to pay their legal fees.
- Praising Assault (2018)- Praising Rep. Greg Gianforte for “body-slamming” a reporter, calling him “my kind of guy.”
- Mocking Assault Victims (2020 & 2022)- Calling the rubber bullet injury to journalist Ali Velshi a “beautiful thing” and joking about the violent hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.
- Visual Threats (2023)- Posting a photoshopped image of himself with a baseball bat next to a photo of District Attorney Alvin Bragg, alongside a post warning of “potential death & destruction.”
- Violent Imagery & Language (2024)- Stating Liz Cheney should have “guns trained on her face” to see how she feels.
- Use of Force as Policy (2025)- Revoking former Vice President Kamala Harris’s lifetime Secret Service protection, an unprecedented move that exposes a political opponent to heightened security risks.
The pattern of rhetoric transcends simple political insult, actively normalizing the concept of political violence and erodes democratic norms. The language undermines the perceived legitimacy of the press, the judiciary, and the electoral process. It also creates a permissive environment for harassment and physical attacks by demonstrating that such actions against his designated targets will meet with approval rather than condemnation.
The tactic remains a central component of his political and legal strategy. Recent actions, such as revoking Harris’s Secret Service detail (2025) and his commentary on Liz Cheney (2024), demonstrate a consistent, ongoing application of this method. He uses this rhetoric to intimidate opponents, rally his base, and frame legal and political challenges as illegitimate, existential “battles.”
Impacts Over the Years and So Far Currently-
- Past Impacts- This rhetoric has been directly linked to a documented surge in threats against election officials, journalists, and judges. The January 6th Capitol riot followed a speech where he urged supporters to “fight like hell.”
- Current Impacts- Law enforcement agencies must allocate significant resources to protect the individuals he targets. Figures like Alvin Bragg received tangible threats, including letters with white powder, immediately following his posts. The tactic successfully deepens political polarization and forces targeted officials to operate in a high-threat environment, which can chill or influence their official conduct.
Strategic Foresight Analysis-
- High Confidence Forecast- Donald Trump will continue and likely escalate this behavior. The tactic has proven highly effective for his objectives- it dominates media cycles, solidifies support from his base (who view it as “fighting”), and successfully intimidates or distracts opponents.
- Drivers- His ongoing legal jeopardy will be a primary driver. Expect intensified verbal attacks against prosecutors, judges, witnesses, and jurors involved in his cases. These attacks will aim to delegitimize the proceedings and potentially inspire harassment against legal officials.
- Strategic Implication- Security and law enforcement agencies must operate on the assumption that his verbal threats will correlate with real-world security risks for the individuals and institutions he targets. Political and media organizations face a strategic challenge- they must cover this behavior as newsworthy while simultaneously avoiding the amplification of its intended intimidating effect. The primary risk is not a direct order, but that a lone actor or group will interpret his language as a call to action.
The following report provides a chronological record of public statements and actions by Donald Trump, from his first presidential campaign in 2015 to the present, that constitute threats or encourage violence. The scope of this documentation is guided by a broad but specific definition of “threat,” encompassing not only direct calls for harm but also implied menaces, the praise or encouragement of violence committed by others, the mockery of victims of political violence, dehumanizing rhetoric, and the use of state power for retaliation and intimidation.
The objective is to create an exhaustive and evidence-based historical ledger, drawing from a comprehensive review of social media archives, news reports, rally transcripts, and official statements. Each entry is presented factually, detailing the date, context, specific language used, and the targeted individual or group. This approach allows the documented record to speak for itself, providing a clear and unfiltered view of a consistent and evolving pattern of communication.
The rhetoric of any major political figure, particularly a president, carries significant weight. It can shape public discourse, influence the actions of supporters, and redefine political norms. By cataloging these specific instances in strict chronological order, this report aims to provide a foundational resource for researchers, historians, and the public to understand the nature, frequency, and escalation of this rhetoric and its tangible consequences for American democracy and civil society.
I. The Campaigner- Laying the Groundwork (2015–2016)
The period of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign established the foundational patterns of his threatening rhetoric. His interactions with protesters, journalists, and political rivals set a precedent for his later conduct, testing and then normalizing the concept of physical confrontation and verbal intimidation as standard political tools. This era was characterized by a symbiotic relationship with his rally audiences, where inflammatory language was met with approval, encouraging further escalation.
Attacks on Journalists and Justification of Violence
One of the earliest and most defining features of the 2016 campaign was the targeting of journalists who posed critical questions. In August 2015, following the first Republican presidential debate, Fox News host Megyn Kelly became a primary target. After Kelly questioned him about his history of derogatory comments toward women, Trump launched a sustained personal attack. He retweeted a supporter who called her a “bimbo” and, in a now-infamous interview with CNN, suggested Kelly’s tough questioning was hormonally driven, stating she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” This comment was widely interpreted as a misogynistic reference to menstruation and marked a significant early example of using personal, gendered attacks to delegitimize a journalist for performing their professional duties.1 This was not a random outburst but the beginning of a deliberate strategy, as Trump would later admit to journalist Lesley Stahl that he attacks the press “to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you. “3
This strategy of delegitimization extended from the press to political dissenters. In November 2015, after a Black Lives Matter protester was punched and kicked by attendees at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump provided a post-hoc justification for the violence. He stated, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing”.4 This comment served as a crucial trial balloon; by framing violence as a potentially appropriate response to protest, he tested the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. The positive reaction from his supporters appeared to embolden him to move from justifying violence to actively encouraging it.
Direct Incitement and Glorification of Violence
By early 2016, the rhetoric had escalated from justifying past violence to incentivizing future acts. At a February 1 rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump explicitly encouraged his supporters to confront protesters, promising to cover any legal repercussions physically. He told the crowd, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously… I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise.”5 This statement represented a direct and premeditated incentive for his supporters to commit acts of assault, effectively offering a financial backstop for violence.
Later that month, on February 23 in Las Vegas, Trump expressed a personal desire to commit violence and glorified a more brutal era of dealing with dissent. After a protester was removed, he waxed nostalgic, stating, “I love the old days – you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” He then made it personal, adding, “I’d like to punch him in the face”.4 These comments created an atmosphere where physical confrontation was not only sanctioned but framed as a laudable, old-fashioned virtue. Following a series of violent incidents at his rallies in March 2016, Trump consistently defended the actions of his supporters by blaming the victims. He characterized protesters as “bad dudes” who were “swinging” and “really dangerous,” a claim contradicted by reports that the protesters were invariably non-violent.5 This narrative recast aggression as a necessary act of self-defense, further solidifying the normalization of violence within his political movement.
Threats Against Democratic Institutions
Beyond inciting physical confrontations, the campaign also featured systematic threats against the core institutions of American democracy: the free press and the electoral system. Throughout 2016, Trump repeatedly threatened to “open up our libel laws” to make it easier to sue and financially cripple news organizations whose coverage he disliked, specifically naming The New York Times and The Washington Post.2 This was a clear threat to use the legal system as a weapon to punish and silence critical reporting.
The most significant institutional threat came in the final months of the campaign, when he began to undermine the legitimacy of the election itself preemptively. His tweets and rally speeches were filled with claims that the election was “rigged”.8 This culminated in his statement at the final presidential debate in October 2016, when he refused to commit to accepting the election results, telling the moderator, “I will look at it at the time… I’ll keep you in suspense.” He later added the caveat that he would “totally accept the results… if I win”.8 This was a foundational threat against the peaceful transfer of power, conditioning his supporters to view any outcome other than his victory as inherently fraudulent. These dual lines of attack—against the press and the electoral process—were mutually reinforcing. A delegitimized press corps could not effectively report on the baselessness of “rigged” election claims, while a delegitimized electoral process made any critical reporting seem like part of the conspiracy, creating a closed information loop for his followers.
II. The First Presidency- Rhetoric from the Oval Office (2017–2020)
Upon assuming the presidency, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and threats gained the full weight and authority of the executive branch. The patterns established on the campaign trail did not diminish; instead, they were amplified and, in some cases, translated into official or quasi-official actions. This period saw the formalization of attacks on the press, the use of violent language in the context of international diplomacy, and the weaponization of economic and national security policy to coerce perceived adversaries.
2017
The first year of the Trump administration was marked by a rapid escalation of his war on the media and the introduction of bellicose language into foreign policy. On February 17, 2017, just weeks into his term, Trump moved beyond campaign insults and, in a tweet, designated several of the nation’s most prominent news organizations—including The New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS, and CNN—as “the enemy of the American People!”.3 This was a profound departure from any previous presidential posture toward the press, employing a term historically used by authoritarian leaders to delegitimize and incite hatred against independent journalism. This phrase would become a staple of his presidency, repeated dozens of times to undermine the credibility of any reporting he found unfavorable.11
This aggressive rhetoric extended to international relations. On August 8, 2017, in response to ongoing provocations from North Korea, Trump issued a stark warning from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He stated that further threats from Pyongyang “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”14 This threat of overwhelming military annihilation stood in sharp contrast to the carefully calibrated language typical of nuclear diplomacy and signaled a willingness to contemplate mass violence on a global scale openly.
Domestically, a defining moment came in his response to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. After a weekend of violence where white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched with torches, culminating in the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer, Trump’s reaction caused a political firestorm. In his initial remarks on August 12, he condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence, on many sides”.14 The phrase “on many sides” was immediately criticized for creating a false moral equivalence between the violent white nationalists and those protesting against them. Rather than retracting the statement, he defiantly doubled down on August 15, insisting that there were “very fine people, on both sides.”14 While he clarified he was not referring to neo-Nazis, his insistence on equating the groups was widely seen as providing comfort and validation to violent far-right extremist movements.
2018
In his second year, Trump moved from providing rhetorical cover for violence to explicitly celebrating a specific, criminal act of violence against a journalist. At a campaign rally in Missoula, Montana, on October 18, 2018, he lauded Republican Congressman Greg Gianforte, who had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017. To loud cheers from the crowd, Trump declared, “Any guy that can do a body slam — he’s my kind of guy”.16 He went on to suggest, with approval, that the violent act had helped Gianforte win his special election. The comments were an unprecedented moment in modern presidential history: a sitting president openly praising a politician for physically attacking a member of the press.
The administration also continued its pattern of using dehumanizing language, particularly in the context of immigration. Throughout 2018, Trump repeatedly referred to some immigrants, especially those alleged to be members of the MS-13 gang, as “animals.” In one notable instance, he stated, “We have people coming into the country… You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals”.19 Such rhetoric, which strips a targeted group of its humanity, has historically been used to lower the psychological barrier to committing violence against them.
That November, following the midterm elections, Trump engaged in a series of pointed, personal attacks against three Black female journalists during press conferences. He dismissed a question from CNN’s Abby Phillip as “stupid,” called April Ryan, a correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, a “loser” who “doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing,” and accused PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor of asking a “racist question”.1 The concentration of these personal and demeaning attacks on women of color suggested a specific pattern of animus.
2019
By 2019, the use of threats had become a central component of the Trump administration’s policy toolkit. On May 30, Trump announced via Twitter that he would impose a 5% tariff on all goods imported from Mexico, to be increased monthly up to 25%, unless the Mexican government took decisive action to curb the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S. border.20 This represented the weaponization of U.S. economic power to threaten a major trading partner into compliance with his administration’s immigration agenda.
This model of leveraging state power for political ends culminated in the Ukraine scandal. Throughout the summer and fall of 2019, Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, engaged in a pressure campaign to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into announcing investigations into his chief 2020 political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden. The most significant element of this pressure was Trump’s personal decision to place a hold on a $400 million military aid package that had been approved by Congress and was desperately needed by Ukraine for its defense against Russian aggression.22 This action constituted a direct threat to the national security of a foreign ally, using vital military assistance as leverage to solicit foreign interference in an American election. The threat became public when, on October 3, Trump stood on the White House lawn and explicitly called on foreign powers to investigate his rival, stating, “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”22
2020
In the final year of his first term, the rhetoric intensified amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, nationwide racial justice protests, and the presidential election. On September 18, 2020, at a rally in Minnesota, Trump openly mocked MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi, who had been struck by a rubber bullet while covering protests in Minneapolis months earlier. Trump feigned a pained voice, saying, “He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas… ‘My knee. My knee.’ Nobody cared.” He then described the scene of law enforcement clearing the area as “the most beautiful thing” and a “beautiful sight.”23 This incident was a prime example of not only mocking a victim of violence but also celebrating the use of force against journalists.
In response to the widespread protests following the murder of George Floyd, Trump adopted a militaristic and threatening posture. On May 29, 2020, he tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase with a violent and racially charged history originating from the civil rights era.26 He threatened to deploy the U.S. military to American cities and urged governors to “dominate the streets” to quell the unrest.27
As the election approached and passed, his attacks became more frantic. Following the “Million MAGA March” in Washington, D.C., on November 15, 2020, where his supporters clashed with counter-protesters, Trump posted a series of inflammatory tweets. He referred to counter-protesters as “Antifa SCUM” and “Human Radical Left garbage,” claimed his supporters “aggressively fought back,” and urged the D.C. Police to “do your job and don’t hold back!!!” He concluded by reiterating his long-standing charge: “The Silent Media is the Enemy of the People!!!”.28 This sequence of posts served to praise the aggressive actions of his supporters while simultaneously inciting law enforcement to use greater force against his political opponents.
III. Post-Presidency and Return to Power (2021–2024)
The period following Donald Trump’s first term was defined by the violent culmination of his rhetoric challenging the 2020 election results. After leaving office, his threats did not subside but instead became more personal and targeted, focusing on specific individuals within the justice system, the military, and the Republican party, whom he deemed disloyal. This era saw his language grow more extreme, openly suggesting execution for a top general and employing violent imagery against political rivals.
2021
The year began with the direct consequences of Trump’s sustained campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election. On January 6, 2021, at the “Save America” rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., he addressed a large crowd of his supporters who had gathered to protest the certification of the election results. In a long speech laden with false claims of widespread fraud, he urged them to march to the U.S. Capitol, telling them, “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”.29 This statement was the culmination of months of rhetoric and is widely viewed as the direct incitement for the violent mob that subsequently stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election.29 During the assault, as rioters breached the building and some chanted “Hang Mike Pence!,” Trump further inflamed the situation by tweeting that his Vice President “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
2022
Even out of office, Trump continued his pattern of mocking victims of political violence. The most prominent example occurred following the violent home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on October 28, 2022. The attacker, motivated by far-right conspiracy theories, fractured Pelosi’s skull with a hammer.31 Instead of condemning the attack, Trump repeatedly used it as a punchline at his rallies and in speeches. He would ask his audience, “how’s her husband doing, anybody know?” and make jokes about the security at the Pelosi residence, quipping that the wall around her house “obviously didn’t do a very good job”.32 This behavior reinforced the message to his followers that violence against political opponents was not a matter for condemnation but for ridicule.
2023
In 2023, as legal challenges against him mounted, Trump’s threats became more direct and aimed squarely at the justice system. On March 24, 2023, reacting to the possibility of an indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social platform warning of “potential death & destruction” if he were to be charged.35 The menacing nature of this post was amplified by an accompanying image he shared: a split-screen photo depicting himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Bragg, the prosecutor investigating him.35 This combination of threatening language and violent imagery was an unmistakable act of intimidation directed at a specific legal official.
His threats soon escalated to include suggestions of capital punishment for high-ranking officials. On September 22, 2023, he took to Truth Social to attack General Mark Milley, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump accused Milley of “treason” for having assured his Chinese counterpart of stability during the final months of the Trump administration. He concluded the post by stating that this was an act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”.26 This was a direct public suggestion that the nation’s top military officer should be executed for actions taken in the course of his official duties.
By the end of the year, his rhetoric employed classic dehumanizing tropes. At a campaign rally in November 2023, he promised his supporters that upon returning to office, he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”.38 The term “vermin” has a dark history, used by authoritarian regimes to strip political opponents of their humanity and justify their persecution and eradication.
2024
The violent nature of his rhetoric reached another peak during the 2024 presidential campaign. In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on October 31, 2024, Trump directed intensely menacing language at Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and a staunch critic. After labeling her a “radical war hawk,” Trump said, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face”.39 The imagery strongly evoked a firing squad and was widely condemned as a death threat. In response to the backlash, his campaign issued a statement claiming he was merely “describing a combat zone” to critique her foreign policy stance.39 This pattern of using violent, threatening language and then offering an implausible, alternative explanation became a hallmark of his communication style. The shift in this period was clear: threats were no longer generalized attacks on abstract groups but had become specific, personal, and increasingly violent suggestions aimed at anyone—prosecutors, generals, or fellow Republicans who represented a source of accountability or opposition.
IV. The Second Presidency- Threats as Policy (2025–Present)
Based on reporting and official documents concerning a hypothetical second term, the period from 2025 onward illustrates the full operationalization of threatening rhetoric into state policy. During this time, the levers of the federal government were systematically used to execute retaliatory and punitive actions against political opponents and independent institutions, marking the final stage in the evolution of threats from mere words to concrete government actions.
Retaliation Against Political Opponents
A primary example of this shift was the direct targeting of his 2024 election rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris. On August 29, 2025, the Trump administration officially revoked the extended Secret Service protection that had been granted to Harris by the previous administration.43 Former vice presidents typically receive protection for six months after leaving office, but this has been extended due to the highly polarized and threatening political climate. The revocation was timed just weeks before Harris was scheduled to begin a 15-stop national book tour, forcing her to rely on private security for high-profile public events.44 This action was a clear and punitive use of presidential authority to remove state-provided physical protection from a leading political opponent, thereby increasing her personal risk.
This use of federal power extended to municipal governments that resisted his policy agenda. On September 15, 2025, following the expiration of a temporary 30-day federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, Trump threatened to re-federalize the force. He stated on Truth Social that if Mayor Muriel Bowser and the city did not fully cooperate with his administration’s plans for mass deportations, he would “call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!”.45 This was a direct threat to use extraordinary emergency powers to seize control of a local law enforcement agency to compel compliance with his political objectives.
Systematic Attacks on the Free Press
The long-standing rhetorical war against the media was formalized into a multi-pronged assault using the legal and regulatory powers of the state. The administration initiated a campaign of high-stakes litigation against major news organizations, including filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing it of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic party, and a similar suit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.48 While many of these lawsuits were seen by legal experts as frivolous, they served as a powerful tool of intimidation, forcing media corporations into costly legal battles. In several cases, media parent companies like Paramount (owner of CBS) and Disney (owner of ABC) agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements, a move critics described as a capitulation to government pressure that set a dangerous precedent.49
Beyond lawsuits, the administration weaponized federal agencies. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by a Trump appointee, launched a series of politically motivated investigations into news organizations that had been critical of the president, including NPR, PBS, and CBS.53 These investigations created a chilling effect, signaling that unfavorable coverage could result in regulatory harassment.
Finally, the administration moved to control the flow of information from the White House directly. It broke with nearly a century of precedent by seizing control of the White House press pool, which had traditionally been managed by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association.54 This allowed the administration to decide which journalists could cover the president. In a related move, the Associated Press was barred from the press pool after it refused to adopt Trump’s mandated renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”.54 These actions represented a complete fusion of personal grievance with state power, transforming the institutions of government into instruments for a permanent political war against all perceived enemies.
Analysis of Patterns and Escalation
The chronological record from 2015 to the present reveals a clear, consistent, and escalating pattern of threatening rhetoric and action by Donald Trump. What began as inflammatory language on the campaign trail—testing the boundaries of political discourse—morphed into a governing strategy during his first term and was ultimately operationalized as official state policy in his second. This evolution demonstrates a systematic effort to undermine democratic norms, intimidate opponents, and consolidate personal power by leveraging the threat of violence, legal action, and state-sanctioned retribution.
The targets of these threats have remained remarkably consistent: the free press, political opponents, the justice system, and any group or individual perceived as disloyal or dissenting. The methodology, however, has evolved significantly. The initial phase (2015–2016) focused on normalizing violence at a grassroots level, encouraging supporters at rallies to confront protesters physically and promising to back them up. The second phase, during his first presidency (2017–2020), saw the amplification of these threats with the authority of the Oval Office. The press was officially branded the “enemy of the people,” foreign nations were threatened with economic ruin or military annihilation, and the levers of government, such as foreign aid, were used to coerce allies for personal political gain. The third phase (2021–2024) was characterized by increasingly personal and violent threats aimed at specific individuals—prosecutors, generals, and political figures—who stood in the way of his objectives, with rhetoric that openly suggested execution and death by firing squad. The final phase, as documented in his second term (2025–Present), represents the culmination of this pattern: the full weaponization of the state apparatus to carry out these threats, from removing the physical security of political rivals to launching systematic legal and regulatory assaults on independent media.
The focus here illustrates a profound erosion of the unwritten rules that have long governed American political conduct. The norm of condemning political violence was replaced with praise for assailants and mockery of victims. The expectation of a peaceful transfer of power was replaced with sustained claims of a “stolen” election that incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. The tradition of respecting the independence of the justice system and the press was replaced with a relentless campaign to portray them as corrupt, illegitimate, and deserving of punishment. The cumulative effect has been the creation of a political environment in which threats are commonplace, some increasingly see violence as a legitimate tool, and the institutions designed to ensure accountability are themselves under constant attack. The data presented in this report provides a comprehensive ledger of this transformation, documenting a decade-long pattern of behavior with significant and lasting implications for the stability and future of American democracy.
Typology of Threats by Donald Trump (2015-Present)
| Date | Target | Threat Category | Quote/Action | Source Snippet(s) |
| August 2015 | Megyn Kelly (Journalist) | Personal/Gendered Attack | Stated she had “blood coming out of her wherever” after debate questioning. | 1 |
| November 2015 | Black Lives Matter Protester | Encouragement of Violence | “Maybe he should have been roughed up…” | 4 |
| February 1, 2016 | Protesters | Encouragement of Violence | “knock the crap out of them… I will pay for the legal fees.” | 5 |
| February 23, 2016 | Protester | Glorification of Violence | “I’d like to punch him in the face.” | 4 |
| February 17, 2017 | The Media | Dehumanizing Rhetoric | Labeled major news outlets the “enemy of the American People!” | 3 |
| August 8, 2017 | North Korea | Threat of Military Action | Warned threats would be met with “fire and fury.” | 14 |
| Aug. 12-15, 2017 | Charlottesville Protesters | Validation of Extremists | Claimed there were “very fine people, on both sides.” | 14 |
| October 18, 2018 | Greg Gianforte/Ben Jacobs | Encouragement of Violence | Praised Gianforte for body-slamming a reporter, calling him “my kind of guy.” | 16 |
| May 30, 2019 | Mexico | Threat of State Action | Threatened escalating tariffs to force immigration policy changes. | 20 |
| July-Oct. 2019 | Ukraine | Threat of State Action | Withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival. | 22 |
| September 18, 2020 | Ali Velshi (Journalist) | Mockery of Victim | Mocked Velshi for being hit by a rubber bullet, calling it a “beautiful sight.” | 25 |
| January 6, 2021 | U.S. Congress/Mike Pence | Incitement of Insurrection | Urged supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol. | 29 |
| October 2022 | Paul Pelosi | Mockery of Victim | Repeatedly joked about the violent hammer attack on him. | 32 |
| March 24, 2023 | Alvin Bragg (Prosecutor) | Implied Physical Threat | Warned of “death & destruction” and posted an image of himself with a baseball bat next to Bragg’s photo. | 35 |
| September 22, 2023 | Gen. Mark Milley | Implied Death Threat | Accused him of treason for which the punishment “would have been DEATH!” | 26 |
| November 2023 | Political Opponents | Dehumanizing Rhetoric | Pledged to “root out” political opponents who “live like vermin.” | 38 |
| October 31, 2024 | Liz Cheney | Implied Death Threat | Described wanting to see “nine barrels shooting at her” with “guns trained on her face.” | 39 |
| August 29, 2025 | Kamala Harris | Retaliatory Action | Revoked Secret Service protection for his former political rival. | 43 |
| September 15, 2025 | Washington, D.C. | Threat of State Action | Threatened to “Federalize” the D.C. police force to enforce his policies. | 46 |
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