Vets want what Trump refuses to promise: A nonviolent election

As hundreds of North Carolina Republicans gathered over the Memorial Day weekend to elect delegates to the party’s national convention in July, a coalition of military veterans showed up and asked party leaders for a simple pledge: renounce violence this election.

The veterans were from different political parties and diverse backgrounds. They spoke about their combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. They recalled the sacrifice of those who died fighting terrorism.

“Threats of violence, voter intimidation, and violent rhetoric have no place in our democracy and go against the values that veterans have sworn and given their lives to defend,” the group said in a one-page letter to GOP leaders, including Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump.

The letter noted that national polls show that a majority of Americans are fearful that political violence could follow the Nov. 5 election. It urged party leaders to use their influence to persuade former President Donald Trump to “pledge to support a peaceful and nonviolent election season.”

North Carolina GOP leaders instead had the group swiftly escorted out of the meeting at the Greensboro convention center, saying they had no right to be there.

Matt Mercer, spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, called the vets’ appearance a “stunt.” He said that a video of the exchange had appeared just hours later on the X feed of the left-leaning Cardinal and Pine website. “They barged in. They got what they wanted. It was done in bad faith,” he said.

But sometimes stunts serve a purpose, and in this case it helped drive home that the Republican Party, despite its claim of allegiance to American values, has a candidate for president and a contingent of his supporters that condone and sometimes promote violence. How hard could it be to for them to say that they don’t tolerate political violence and will admonish any campaign that threatens it during the election cycle?

These vets all took an oath to defend the Constitution. They don’t believe Trump will uphold it. They point to the former president’s persistent denial of the legitimacy of the 2020 election and his refusal to say he will accept this year’s results.

“We have no problem going into harm’s way,’’ said Bobby R. Jones, a former Navy commander from Georgia. “But integrity matters when you’re talking about sacrificing your life for someone. [Trump] has never displayed that. He doesn’t know what it’s like for it not to be about him.”

Dan Barkhuff, a former Navy SEAL who started the group Veterans for Responsible Leadership, said there isn’t a single job in the military that Trump would be capable of doing well, “from commander-in-chief, down to the first day of boot camp.”

“He’s selfish. He’s narcissistic. He’s not a team player,” said Barkhuff, whose organization started as a Facebook group and has grown to nearly 9,500 members and a super PAC. “We immediately see people like that do not last long in the military. Yet now we’re talking about letting him run the whole thing. It’s insane.”

The Jan. 6 insurrection is the best proof that Trump incites violence. Even Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the former president’s inflammatory rhetoric led to the attack on the Capitol.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell declared that day in 2021. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like.”

Since then, Trump’s speeches and social media have been laced with threats of violence by his supporters if things don’t go his way in November. Unfortunately, McConnell, like many other GOP leaders, has now endorsed Trump, sending the new message that his behavior is acceptable.

Trump has his supporters in a trap. Party leaders have either succumbed to his loyalty test or fear him too much to admonish him. They ignore signs that he either wants his supporters to rise up and engage in violence, or he is so focused on himself that he is indifferent to the possibility it could happen.

“Our party is always opposed to violence,” Dennis Bailey, a retired Air Force intelligence analyst who attended the convention told me. He said it was wrong to assume otherwise because his fellow Republicans “are good people.”

But if there is anyone urging Trump to stop inciting his supporters, it’s not working.

Last week, Trump falsely alleged on Truth Social that the Federal Bureau of Investigation “was locked and loaded to take me out and put my family in danger,” distorting the boilerplate language included in the FBI document used to search his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a judge to bar Trump from making any more false and inflammatory statements that would subject the FBI agents who are potential witnesses in the case to “the risk of threats, violence, and harassment.”

“The reality is we have people who are going to act on stochastic terrorism,” Barkhuff said. “Words matter.”

Naveed Shah, an Army veteran who is political director for Common Defense, a Washington-based grassroots organization for progressive veterans with 5,000 members in North Carolina, said they believe, the threat of violence would end “if leadership does the right thing.”

The way for Trump to win the election, Shah said, isn’t by issuing strongman threats; it’s to “make a better argument to the American people.”

He’s right. Free and fair elections happen because of the democracy for which these veterans were willing to risk their lives. It shouldn’t take letters or protests from them for our politicians to renounce voter intimidation and violence. But they are a good reminder that all political leaders — no matter the party — should condemn such acts. For the GOP, it’s not too late to start.