With the midterms less than a month away, left-leaning news outlets and political commentators are resorting to dark predictions about the future of the country with warnings of imminent civil war if Republicans retake control of Congress in November.
Talk of a second civil war among liberal journalists, television personalities and lawmakers has become increasingly commonplace following the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8, after which liberal pundits repeatedly claimed on-air that evolving distrust for the U.S. government among Trump supporters would lead to escalated political violence.
The topic resurfaced weeks later when President Biden called his predecessor and "MAGA Republicans" a threat to "the very foundations of our republic" in a controversial speech in Philadelphia.
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In the days that followed, left-wing media figures have rallied behind Biden's messaging, giving voters a bleak ultimatum as they head to the polls: If Democrats don't emerge victorious in the midterms, they say, the country should brace for civil war.
Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta said on The New York Times' "The Argument" podcast this week that he is "bed-wetting" over the possibility that the country could be heading "toward a meaningful scale of civic violence."
"What we are discussing is some significant scale of semiorganized, lethal, civil conflict that is organized around not just political and ideological disputes but perceived threats to economies, livelihoods," he said.
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan expressed a similar take on his show this week, where he described the 2022 midterm elections as a choice between the dismantling of democracy or inevitable insurrection.
"If the election deniers on the right win in 2022, in November, next month, to me, democracy looks like it’s over in America," Hasan said. "Fascism is here to stay. And if they lose, we get maybe another insurrection, domestic terrorism, a civil war, God forbid."
Comedian Kathy Griffin argued on Twitter that a vote for Republicans in November is a vote for civil violence.
"If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican," she wrote.
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MSNBC host Tiffany Cross suggested in August that a civil war is already taking place in America, telling viewers on Joy Reid's "The ReidOut" that it's too late to temper down divisive political rhetoric and threats made against the FBI in the days following the Trump raid.
"The train has left the station. There is no dealing with the rhetoric. At this point, we need to have serious conversations around preparing for actual violence. People keep saying a civil war is coming. I would say a civil war is here. And I don’t mean to be hyperbolic," she said.
Cross was echoing the talking point of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who claimed on an earlier episode of her show that the GOP gaining power in the midterm elections would "embolden" violent right-wing extremists who want a "civil war" to take over the levers of U.S. power.
"We've got to understand that this is a group that has been radicalized by the great replacement myth and many other things and have been pushing for violence and pushing for even civil war, so that is what’s at stake right now in terms of this election," he said.
MSNBC’s national affairs analyst John Heilemann said on "Morning Joe" last month that a Trump return to office would mean a "more energized and more violent" base than he had in previous years.
"The people who are going to be at the core of his base are going to be more animated, more ginned up, more willing to take to the barricades to do whatever is necessary to try to reinstall him in power," Heilemann said, "And that’s the danger, is that the fact that at the base is getting smaller, it makes it more dangerous in a lot of ways because those are the people who are willing to do things like take up arms and press the questions and tactics that lead to civil war."
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"Maybe now it is all about the violence," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough agreed. "It all is about an insurrection. It all – in [Trump's] mind, about a civil war."
President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass told Scarborough in August that the country is battling a dangerous period that resembles the 19th century in the run-up to the Civil War, which began in 1861.
Warnings of political violence continued in online print publications such as The Washington Post, which saw an analysis from "21 experts" repeatedly warn of civil violence and the end of the republic if Trump is elected president again in 2024.
Author and activist Ibram Kendi, largely associated with his role in the critical race theory movement, argued that the "most immediate concern" of Trump's return would create a great domestic terror threat and cause violence in the streets. UC-San Diego Professor Barbara Walter, who wrote "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them," said such dynamics "could intensify with Trump or a similar figure in the White House."
