A call for calm, a serving of hate, and a step back. What Americans are saying

Leaders from Arizona to Massachusetts have spent the last few days calling for the angry rhetoric to be calmed and the temperature to be turned down. President Joe Biden asked the country for the same in an address on Sunday night, and former President Donald Trump urged the country to unite, just a day after surviving the attempt on his life.

Voters are answering the call, albeit not all and each in their own way. Across the USA TODAY Network, they expressed their views, their fears, their reservations, and still, their anger.

In Palm Beach, Florida, resident Matthew Swift was fretting about the terrifying events but trying to move forward in a constructive way.

"I truly hope this moment will bring about a reevaluation of the current tone of our politics and get us to shift to a much more positive and forward thinking place as a nation," Swift told the Palm Beach Daily News. "I have spent my entire career traveling the world, and we all need to recognize just how lucky we all are to be Americans and hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

Ann Elizabeth Posakony of Ventura, California, was motivated to write a letter to the editor of her local newspaper, the Ventura County Star.

"I do not support Donald Trump, but I began to hear others like me say, 'Too bad he missed,'" she wrote. "No matter what we think of each other across our divisions, I believe it is comments such as this that have gotten us to such a place of violence in the first place. It is wrong to fight one perceived 'evil' with another evil, even though this seems to be the way the world works these days."

What is meant by political 'rhetoric'?

What does it mean to turn down the rhetoric? Rhetoric, defined by Merriam-Webster as "the art of speaking or writing effectively," is typically used to describe when candidates and political leaders try to persuade voters and others and is fundamental to the push and pull of politics.

In places like Michigan, sentiments on the ground seemed to be the same. "Whether you like (Trump) or not … the violence is just out of control," Christine Ramos, 57, of Mason told the Detroit Free Press.

"It should never get that serious as far as politics," said Cedric Martin, 46, of Detroit.

Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona House, said what he heard in conversations after the shooting was a mixture of shock, gratitude that Trump survived and sorrow for the bystanders killed, injured or traumatized.

Bowers led the Arizona House in 2020 and faced pressure from Trump and his acolytes to reverse the state’s election result that showed Biden the winner. His refusal to accede led to death threats. Protestors paraded outside his home, including, Bowers said, one man with a gun.

“Where we go from here, it’s all by choice,” he told The Arizona Republic. “We all either choose to say 'I can be a little more civil and I can be a little less … incendiary.'”

In Texas, leaders in El Paso strongly condemned violence while calling for greater respect and kindness in political discourse.

"Senseless acts of violence have no place in our country," El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser told the El Paso Times. "We may not all agree ideologically, but this country was founded on that freedom. Whether you support the former president or not, I think all of us can agree that these types of violent acts should be condemned."

Some in his city had a sharper political point to make.

Republican Irene Armendariz-Jackson, a hardcore Trump supporter running for a U.S. House seat from El Paso, called Trump "America's Champion," sharing a photo on X of the bleeding ex-president with his fist defiantly in the air after being shot.

"The intolerance of the left has brought us to this. @JoeBiden and @TheDemocrats have now shown they’ll go to every extreme to keep Trump from winning. GULTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!!! Viva Trump!!!" Armendariz-Jackson posted on X above a screen capture of a Fox News image of the shooting.

Arizona state Rep. Austin Smith, a Republican, also posted Sunday on X that the assassination attempt was the culmination of a years-long and increasingly violent rhetoric and actions by liberals. “They hate you. They hate me. They hate your spouse. They hate your children. They hate your grandchildren. They hate your ancestors,” he wrote. “They drove this sick young person to kill a President."

How does America move forward without violence?

In Palm Beach, Florida, Bram Majtlis, a South End resident in the city and former chairman of the town's code enforcement board, told the the Palm Beach Daily News that "differences in political opinion should be addressed via respectful dialogue, not by violence.”

“We have reached a point where all Americans need to take a step back and take the time to reflect and actually listen to one another ... and start employing kindness, tolerance and respect towards each other,” Majtlis said.

Judith Conlan drove from her home in Somerset, Massachusetts, to share her appreciation for former president Trump with drivers in nearby Taunton. She was one of about a dozen people who stood in the shade on a sweltering Sunday afternoon holding signs and flags in support of Trump.

“It’s not far to travel for a man who took a bullet for us,” Conlan told the Fall Herald News.

Contributing from the USA TODAY Network: Jodie Wagner, Darrell Hofheinz, Shannon Donnelly, Sasha Hupka, Richard Ruelas, Dan Medeiros, Daniel Borunda, Richard Ruelas, Zoe Jaeger and Halley BeMiller.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump rally shooting spurs calls for calm and uniting yet hate lingers