They say politics can be murder. For a disturbing number of Americans on the Left, that seems to be an adage taken literally.
A new poll from the progressive Center for Strategic Politics indicates just how far some Democrat voters are willing to go to see President Donald Trump removed from power. Or, as the pollsters somewhat mutedly put it, “Democrats want Trump out by (almost) any means necessary.”
The survey of 683 Democrat voters found overwhelming positive reactions to Trump being impeached and convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment, at 87% and 84%, respectively. Far more troublingly, 59% said they would react positively if military leaders removed Trump and assumed control of the government, while 55% said the same if he simply died in his sleep.
The only means of removal that didn’t receive a plurality of Democratic support is an assassination, though nearly one-third of Democrats would react positively to the news Trump had been killed at a rally.
Apparently protecting democracy now includes the occasional military junta.
The CSP findings also echo disturbing polling released more than a year earlier by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University. In April 2025, researchers found that 55.2% of respondents who identified as left of center said murdering Trump would be at least somewhat justified. Nearly 49% said the same about Elon Musk, while roughly 58% said destroying a Tesla dealership in protest was at least somewhat acceptable.
Those numbers were alarming enough on their own, but five months later, the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk gave the poll a far more visceral angle.
Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, engaging in the spirited debate he so dearly loved. Prosecutors allege that the accused killer targeted Kirk because of his political and religious beliefs, though the online reaction to Kirk’s murder exposed a far likelier reason.
Social media quickly ballooned with posts celebrating Kirk’s death, mocking his widow, and arguing that Kirk deserved what happened to him. Most, if not all, of those videos remain online with hundreds of thousands of comments bolstering the idea a man deserved to be murdered in front of his wife and children due to his political beliefs.
A YouGov poll conducted after Kirk’s killing cemented the Left’s vile views on political violence, reporting 16% of liberals said it was usually or always acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they opposed. Among those identifying as “very liberal,” that number rose to 24%.
Conservatives registered at just 4%.
Political violence begins when violence against political opponents becomes a meme or morally permissible so long as the target is sufficiently hated. It then ends with a bullet through the neck, after which Democrats dance on the poor soul’s grave.
Democrats are so effectively able to cultivate a culture of political violence because both institutionalists represented by elected officials and their tacitly accepted Antifa shock troops have curated a culture of political suppression.
In my native Portland, Oregon, violent thugs spent the summer of 2020 looting buildings and throwing firebombs into a federal courthouse in the name of social justice.
Fast-forward to 2026 and the political violence continues, now mostly targeting federal immigration authorities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents face not only bureaucratic resistance from city officials but also violent mobs; Portland residents tried building battering rams to storm ICE headquarters.
And what happens when law enforcement has enough and acts to stop the carnage? The rioters are bailed out by the Democrat elected officials who swear they don’t support political violence.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris got flak from conservatives when she eagerly encouraged people to support the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a fundraiser used to free violent criminals and looters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” Harris posted on Twitter, now X.
When significant numbers of Democrat poll respondents say they would welcome a military coup or support assassinating the president, there’s a deep rot at play.
Political violence thrives on permission, explicit or subtle. As Democrats have spent the better part of a decade warning that American democracy is under threat from Trump and the Right, that permission structure is entirely on the Left.
You cannot save democracy by cheering when your political opponents are removed from it. That is, in fact, how democracies die.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
