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The growing frequency of political violence raises the specter of a Republican insurgency if former President Trump runs and loses in 2024, warned conservative columnist Max Boot on Tuesday.
He said he feared that an armed faction of Trump fanatics would 'bear roughly the same symbiotic relationship to the GOP that the IRA had to the Sinn Fein party.'
His Washington Post column will be dismissed as the work of a Never Trump Republican by some but it reflects growing alarm that the U.S. faces rising incidents of political violence after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Last week, Rep. Paul Gosar was censured and stripped of his committee assignments by the House for posting an edited anime video that showed him attacking Democrats - but he escaped the wrath of his own party and only two Republicans supported the motion.
Boot said Republicans had made no attempt to tone down the rhetoric of some members and were 'hostage to the extremists in their ranks.'
'We are at the greatest peril since the early 1970s — when the threat emanated from the left — of a violent insurgency in America. Indeed, the scattered terrorist attacks we have seen in recent years might be the early stages of such an uprising,' wrote Boot, who has been a leading critic of Trump on the right.
