Political violence is no longer an abstraction in American life, as detailed in this month’s profile of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk. As the article reports, a growing number of lawmakers — across parties — say they worry about their own safety in ways they never imagined a decade ago.
Few people have observed this shift as closely, or as personally, as Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. His wife, former U.S. House Rep. Gabby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt in 2011.
In this conversation with McKay Coppins, Kelly reflects on what he sees driving the current climate: economic anxiety, social fragmentation, the distortions of social media and a political ecosystem that increasingly rewards outrage. He describes how members of Congress talk about safety behind closed doors, what rising threats mean for democratic accessibility and why small changes in tone from national leaders can reverberate far beyond Washington.
The discussion, which has been edited for clarity and length, ranges widely — from the effects of National Guard deployments in major cities, to the politics of immigration enforcement, to the uneasy balance between de-escalation and blunt criticism of presidential power. That sort of criticism has caught the ire of the president. In November, a week after this conversation, Kelly was one of six Democratic lawmakers who had served in the military or the intelligence community who participated in a video reminding service members that they could refuse illegal orders. In response, the president said Kelly and the others in the video should be arrested and tried for “seditious behavior,” which he said was “punishable by death.” As of press time, Kelly has sued the Pentagon over its move to censure and demote the decorated, retired Navy captain over his comments.
Kelly’s perspective on this moment is part diagnosis and part warning, grounded in the day-to-day realities of governing at a time when the prospect of violence shadows public life.
McKay Coppins: As someone who has been covering politics for a long time, the increase of political violence seems like a blinking red warning light for the health of our democracy. I’m curious what you think is driving it.
Mark Kelly: Well, people are feeling desperate in a lot of different ways. It might be social change. It might be economic inequality. The wealthier folks in our country just keep getting richer. And then overlaid on top of that is social media and the ability to put a message out into the world in a rather anonymous way, where you can say things to a large, very large, group of people that you would never say to them publicly, like if you were standing in front of them. And it just further takes us down a road where we become more divided. And I think people think this is them against us. And we’re somehow marching towards some kind of civil war. I don’t believe that. I think we’ve got to figure out ways to turn down the temperature here. It’s up to us, people like myself and others, in leadership positions to help the country move forward. I think it’s also fair to say that we have a president who looks for every opportunity to divide us. He’s got the exact opposite instinct of every other president we’ve had in my lifetime. And I think it’s probably fair to say every other president this country has ever had. I mean, can anybody think of one time that when something major has happened in our country that Donald Trump became the unifier? I can’t.
COPPINS: I’ve seen a pretty dramatic shift in our political culture, and I think a lot of people have gotten used to it, and stopped realizing how different things are now than they were not that long ago.
KELLY: I think saying dramatic shift is an understatement. Think about this for a second. At a memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk says she forgives the shooter. And Donald Trump follows that up with saying he hates his political enemies.
COPPINS: I have spoken to people who are in high elected office who acknowledge privately or anonymously that they are thinking about their personal safety and the safety of their families more than ever; that somebody could try to kill them at any given moment, which I think was not the case 20, 30 years ago. But I’m curious if you are seeing that same thing.
KELLY: We talk about it. And the death threats to members of Congress are up dramatically from what I’ve learned, being the spouse of Gabby. And after she was shot, just from my discussions with the Secret Service and the FBI, you learn that there’s not a lot you can do, and it’s usually not the person that makes a threat. We always focus on these people who make the threat. You know, Charlie Kirk’s shooter didn’t threaten him. My wife, Gabby’s shooter, never threatened her. So folks are really, really concerned about it. We’re trying to do some things to make us a little bit safer.
We’ve got to figure out ways to turn down the temperature. It’s up to people in leadership positions to help the country move forward.
COPPINS: A lot of people who come to Washington for the first time are actually surprised by how accessible their congressmen and senators are. You can go through a metal detector to get into the office buildings, but then you can just walk right up to an office. And I actually think that’s a beautiful thing about American democracy. We don’t want to forfeit that because we can’t figure out how to keep people who want to harm elected officials away from them, right?
KELLY: We don’t need to live in that kind of world, and we don’t want to discourage people from serving in elected office because they’re afraid of being harmed. That’s not a good environment. In my view, the No. 1 thing that could happen right now to reduce the amount and the threat of political violence would be for the president to say, “Hey, we’re all Americans. We are all in this together. We’ve got differences of opinion. But Democrats are not my enemy, and the Republicans are not the enemy of the Democrats.” That is definitely true here on Capitol Hill, where I’ve got great relationships with my Republican colleagues. We don’t agree on everything. And we often have to verbally fight it out on the floor over policy. But to have somebody who is leading this country focus on bringing us together and unite us and talk about values and what has created this great cohesive country, that would be huge. Now, I don’t hold my breath, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
COPPINS: It does seem like most elected officials in both parties really do want to figure out how to solve this problem for the sake of the country and, if nothing else, for their own personal safety. You’ve become friends with Sen. John Curtis of Utah. You disagree. You belong to different parties. But you work together.
KELLY: I’m a Democrat. He’s a Republican, and we have differences of opinion. And sometimes, you know, those differences could be pretty significant on policy. But we’re friends and I enjoy serving with him. The relationships between senators are not what people think they are. Let me give you an example. I was recently talking to a pretty sophisticated person, who is very engaged politically, who asked me if I ever see (Texas Republican Sen.) Ted Cruz. And I said, “Yeah, I see him basically every week.” And then she said, “Do you ever talk to Ted Cruz? You don’t talk to him, do you?” And I said, “Yeah, I talk to him, maybe not every day, but every week. I’m friends with Ted Cruz.” And they found this almost unbelievable. That a Democrat in the United States Senate could be friendly with a Republican colleague. And I’ve told Ted Cruz this story. And I’m like, “Ted, we got to figure out a way to show that we work together.” We can disagree, but we do get along and we have respectful relationships. I mean, across the board. I’m talking about all 100 of us. Now, you might have specific people you’re not like besties with, right? But we have strong relationships. And if the American people saw that a little bit more and understood that, I think that would also have a positive effect.
COPPINS: That conversation you just described is emblematic of why the political incentives flow the other way. There are not many incentives for senators to show their constituents, especially the constituents in their base, that they are friendly with “the enemy.” Some people would be offended by it.
KELLY: Well, because people view them as the enemy, but I don’t.
COPPINS: And this is what has to change. How do you fix this?
I think it’s also fair to say that we have a president who looks for every opportunity to divide us. He’s got the exact opposite instinct of every other president we’ve had in my lifetime.
KELLY: We do events together, where we show people we’re friendly, and we go on TV together. I’ve done that a number of times with my Republican colleagues. We try to say nice things about them and we try to be respectful. And you can disagree. We’re going to win some political fights and we’re going to lose some, but you don’t have to go after people’s character and you don’t have to refer to them as enemies and call them awful names. Because people see that and they model that behavior.
COPPINS: The thing that always frightens me about political violence, aside from the obvious, is that everyone who studies this issue will tell you that political violence begets more political violence. We are in a moment where the imagery of violence, the threat of violence, looms in our politics. And just one example is President Trump earlier this year began deploying troops to American cities to impose public order, to crack down on crime. What do you make of this moment?
KELLY: Well, I’d say it’s not helpful. I get it, I’m the son of two cops. We want safe communities. We want safe streets. But to use the United States Army and the National Guard in this role just sends the wrong message about the purpose of the military. In Donald Trump’s first term, he asked if the National Guard could shoot people that were protesting. “Can we just shoot them in the legs?” People remember that. And now they see these troops deployed in their communities, whether it’s here in Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles. And they are wondering, what’s next? I always question, what’s his motivation? I mean, is it really about crime in safer communities? Or is he trying to send a message that he has this political tool that he is willing to use against the American people?
COPPINS: There’s been a lot made of this idea that there has been less activism, fewer protests, fewer demonstrations in the street in Trump’s second term compared to his first term. Are you saying that you think that the presence of the National Guard and the kind of imagery that’s been invoked is part of the reason there haven’t been as many anti-Trump demonstrations in the second term?
KELLY: Well, I haven’t seen that statistic. So I’ll take your word for it that that is accurate. Yeah, I think it could be. Or maybe folks are just exhausted and are starting to check out. And that’s probably the worst thing that could happen. People checking out politically and say, “Hey, I’m just tired of all this.” And my worry is they check out and then maybe they don’t vote, they don’t get involved. They’re afraid to go to a peaceful protest because they’re afraid it’s going to turn into something else. I am concerned about the chilling effect that these deployments will have on the American people.
COPPINS: There are some who believe Democrats allowed for too much public disorder and crime to spread, and as a result, a political space was created for Trump to come in and be the strongman. What do you think of that line of criticism?
KELLY: I think that’s fair. I mean, people don’t like crime. My wife was the subject of a horrendous crime, and they shouldn’t have to tolerate it. And I can tell you, it’s not helping law enforcement to have the president instructing masked ICE agents, who are also law enforcement, to chase people down because of the color of their skin. What are folks in the community supposed to do when a guy with no identification and a mask comes to chase them down? I mean, what would anybody do? That’s not giving the American people tremendous confidence in police in general.
COPPINS: I have a colleague at The Atlantic who recently wrote about this question of ICE agents wearing masks. And his reporting suggested that they know it’s a bad look. They know that it reduces public trust, and they’re continuing to wear it for a variety of reasons. But one of them is if an interaction that looks bad goes viral, that they could receive their own death threats. What do you say to ICE agents who say, “Look, I have to worry about my own safety as I’m carrying out the orders that I’ve been given”?
KELLY: Don’t have bad interactions with people. Do the job in a respectful way and follow the law. By the way, you don’t have to follow unlawful orders. That’s true for the military. I think it’s true for federal law enforcement, too. Nobody can tell you to break the law. You can’t be told to violate people’s constitutional rights. People have to stand up and say, “No, I’m not going to do that.”
COPPINS: Would you like to see more of that among ICE agents?
KELLY: Of course. I’d like to see them wearing an ID, not wearing masks and telling Stephen Miller, or Kristi Noem, “We will follow the law and there are limits to what we will do. And we’re not violating people’s constitutional rights.” I mean, there’s evidence that there were deported American citizens, and they’re breaking up communities. It benefits our country in no way — tearing communities apart, taking parents away from their children. I visited two folks in an ICE facility. One of them, her name’s Kelly Yu, came to the United States from China 20 years ago. Today, her mother’s a U.S. citizen. Her daughter’s a U.S. citizen. Her sister’s a U.S. citizen. Her husband’s a U.S. citizen. She’s the only one who is not. She’s been here 20 years. She has two or three businesses. She has 70 employees. She has added to our economy, added to that community in such a positive way. She’s not only putting food on her family’s table. She’s putting food on other people’s tables. She’s no threat to society at all. She’s been sitting in a jail in Florence, Arizona, for months. Now she has a deportation order. They’re going to kick her out of the country and send her back to China. For what? Doesn’t make us a better country. And here’s the sad thing about this. I’ve got Republican colleagues that feel mostly the same as I do about this issue. Many of them don’t think we should be deporting 10 or 20 million people. They know that that does not benefit us as a nation. Sure, we need strong border security. We should be kicking out criminals and gang members and drug dealers. But didn’t Donald Trump run on that? I guess it’s fair to say he also said the mass deportation thing. I don’t think anybody believed him.
COPPINS: I’m going to press you on this a little bit. One could argue that Democratic policy failures opened the door to the mass deportations and the ICE raids, because the southern border, by most objective measurements, got fairly out of control.
KELLY: You don’t have to push me on this. I agree with you. And Joe Biden’s policy at the border was not working. It was a crisis. I said that from the first time I got elected and worked really hard with this and pushed back against the administration and the White House multiple times. We have got to do more. We need more Border Patrol agents. By the way, we need to close some of these gaps in the border wall. I mean, I’m probably the only Democrat that was able to get the White House to build some more border wall.
COPPINS: I want to bring this conversation back to where we started. You talked about the need for us to turn down the temperature as a country. But at the same time, you’re not pulling your punches, right? When you talk about President Trump, you’re very critical of his policies. You’re very critical of him. How do you reconcile the desire to de-escalate the tension in our political culture with what you seem to believe is a need to also be very clear-eyed and direct about the points of disagreement?
KELLY: Well, here’s the thing, you probably noticed that I never called the president a name, right? I never said he was my enemy. I want to work with the president on anything that helps this country. We are so fortunate to live in the greatest country that this planet has ever seen. We’re generous. We’re innovative. We’re welcoming. We don’t always get it right. And I think this president largely gets most of it wrong. Not everything, but a lot of it. But I don’t consider him my enemy at all.
Adapted from the “Deseret Voices” podcast, which is released on Thursdays on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Deseret News YouTube channel and at Deseret.com/podcasts. Video clips of interviews are posted on the Deseret News social media channels including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
This story appears in the January/February 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.