After Trump Assassination Attempt, a Reckoning for America

By Daniel Hoffman

Hoffman served as a three-time station chief and a senior executive clandestine service officer with assignments included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and war zones in the Middle East and South Asia. Hoffman also served as director of the CIA's Middle East and North Africa Division. He is currently a national security analyst with Fox News.

EXPERT Q&A — In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, officials and experts are working to assess how the attack plays into the threat of domestic terrorism. But other experts are emphasizing the message – and potential lessons – when it comes to violence in America, and how such violence is often coupled with and amplified by political divisions.

The Cipher Brief spoke with former Senior CIA Officer and three-time station chief Dan Hoffman to discuss the potential dangers ahead and how the nation may counter them.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Cipher Brief: How has the attempted assassination of former President Trump impacted your thinking about the domestic terrorism threat in the United States?

Hoffman: We don’t know what this is. This just might be a lone wolf. I wouldn’t call him a terrorist. You’ve got to separate things into three categories: What’s known, what’s unknown and what’s possible.

All we know right now, is that a 20-year-old kid who had a bunch of IED explosives in his car and an AR-15, was 130 yards away in a building.  We’re making a lot of assumptions when we don’t even know his motive. We don’t know if he had a network. So, I’m not going to call it terrorism or domestic terrorism right now.

The Cipher Brief: Fair point.  Though, do you think this shooting could inspire or encourage domestic terrorist groups or radical groups to take action over political grievances? 

Hoffman: I don’t think that’s the way I would look at it. This is something totally different. This is America’s reckoning with violence. We need to be asking questions like why do we have more guns than people in this country? Why do our politicians and their acolytes love their country but hate their political opponents so much that they use language intended to conquer them as opposed to reasoning with them? That’s what this is about. It’s not about domestic terrorism in my opinion.

The Cipher Brief: In that case, what can be done about it?

Hoffman: There are a lot of things we need to be thinking about. First of all, on the tactical level, this was a major tactical failure where we didn’t control the space where that rally was taking place. Were it not for the wind factor – if you watch the breeze, that was a part of it – and former President Trump turning his head, he would have been a dead man, and then we’d be having a very different conversation. So, he dodged a bullet in our political system, and dodged a real one, too. 

Secondly, there’s a role for the intelligence community to play, but it’s got to be bipartisan, where we lock down all the stupid conspiracy theories and don’t let Russia and China divide us because they’re going to try to divide us with propaganda and disinformation about this attempted assassination of the former president. So, we’ve got to work on that and have a plan to deal with it. 

And then lastly, we have to have a reckoning with violence in our country, which includes school shootings, attacks on politicians, rhetoric and the fact that our parties can’t engage with each other. They are for sure to be blamed in part for the very reckless rhetoric that we see between our two parties. All of these things are worth considering. So, it would be good if we had some Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill willing to come together and assemble a committee to figure out how they can do better at this.

You’ve got a small percentage of people in our country who think that it’s OK to solve our problems with violence. There was a poll that reflected that about 10% of the respondents believe that and that’s a lot of people. All it takes is one 20-year-old wing-nut to kill the former president. So, yes, we’ve got a problem. And if we’re not awake already to this fact, then I’m not sure what it will take for us to wake up.

The Cipher Brief: You alluded to misinformation, disinformation, and how big of an issue those things are. Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Hoffman: Misinformation and Disinformation are like force multipliers for more distrust of our institutions and distrust of people who don’t agree with us, and that really stresses our democracy. So, it’s in the interest of Democrats and Republicans to try to fix that together.

There is an opportunity here for an intelligence committee to address it, where Democrats and Republicans come together.  The House and Senate intel committee folks, should be talking about this on television.  The message from them needs to be “No, Russia and China, we’re not going to let you do this to us. We’re united. We love our country more than we hate each other. Even though we engage in dialogue, which is heated at times, which you’d never see in Russia or China, we’re not going to let you infiltrate us with your propaganda and disinformation that is designed to make us weak so that you can conquer us. We won’t let that happen.”


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It’s a tough time. I grew up in Boston and the first book I read was about the JFK assassination. He was like a hero to us growing up, especially for those of us who grew up in Boston. His assassination was horrific, yet this in some ways, is arguably even more difficult and more challenging to address just because we’re so politically divided, more so than we were when President Kennedy was shot and killed.

The Cipher Brief: Are you surprised that something like this happened?

Hoffman: When you’re talking about human behavior, there are always going to be surprises. You cannot prepare your way out of anything in this world. You’ve got to embrace the unexpected, which means everything from super-melancholy to joyful. But we can’t predict human behavior. There is always stuff that’s going to happen that surprises you and that we didn’t ever imagine. We can prepare as much as we want, but the ball’s going to bounce a different way every day. 

This attack on the former president came as a surprise. I’m sure the Secret Service didn’t expect it. Could it have been prevented? It looks to me like there are a whole lot of precautions that could have been taken to prevent it, but if there’s a silver lining, it’s the fact that the failure to prevent it might actually lead to the kind of national dialogue that we need in this country. 

If you’re a glass-half-full person, which I find that I still am more often than not, then the fact that the president didn’t get seriously hurt serves as a small price to pay perhaps for the national reconciliation. We shouldn’t waste this opportunity.

The Cipher Brief: How confident are you that national reconciliation can happen?

Hoffman: I don’t know. I still believe in our country, but if past is prologue, I’m not super-confident that our elected representatives can pull this one off. But I still believe in our country and I still believe that our younger generation wants reconciliation. I’m hopeful that we’ll figure it out.

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