Let me be unmistakably clear: I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the use of violence for political ends. Violence has no place in a democracy.

As facts continue to emerge, I am grateful to the law enforcement and security professionals whose swift action prevented further harm.

What happened at the press dinner was frightening. My heart is with those who were there, those who felt the immediate threat, who are still processing what it means to have your sense of safety disrupted in a moment that should have been routine. No one should have to experience that.

Moments like this test not just our sense of safety, but our institutions and how we respond as a society.

If we are serious about democracy—about national security in its fullest sense—we have to be honest about what this moment represents.

Political violence is not just an isolated act. It is a symptom of eroding legitimacy.

When citizens lose faith in institutions, in processes, and in one another, violence becomes thinkable. And once it becomes thinkable, it becomes dangerous—not just to individuals, but to the stability of the system itself. Democracies do not fail all at once. They erode when trust breaks down, when disagreement becomes dehumanization, and when force begins to replace persuasion.

That is the risk we are facing.

But there is another truth we have to confront.

For many Americans, this kind of fear is not new.

Across this country, children rehearse for active shooter scenarios as part of their education. Houses of worship invest in security as a matter of survival. Civil society organizations plan public events with the understanding that violence is a possibility. Survivors of domestic violence live with that threat every day.

This is not hypothetical. Just last week in Louisiana, a man killed eight children—most of them his own—in a domestic shooting. It is an almost unthinkable act of violence, and yet it underscores how immediate and devastating this threat is for families across the country.

Gun violence in America is not new. It is not rare. It is not abstract.

What feels new, for some, is not the existence of the threat—but who it has reached.

I do not say that to minimize what anyone experienced at the press dinner. Nor to excuse it in any way. As I said above—and will say again—violence is unacceptable. I hold both of these things at once.

But we should ask ourselves, honestly, what it says about us that an incident in which a perpetrator was stopped before causing mass harm commands more sustained attention than the repeated, devastating loss of life we see elsewhere—children in schools, families in their homes, people in places of worship.

If legitimacy is the foundation of democracy, then consistency matters. Whose safety we prioritize—and whose we normalize at risk—shapes whether people believe the system is fair, responsive, and worth sustaining.

I have heard people say, in the aftermath of this, that our country is sick.

I think they may mean something different than I do, but I agree with the diagnosis.

We are losing the ability to engage across difference. Political disagreement has hardened into something more dangerous—a moral binary where each side sees itself as wholly good and the other as irredeemable. That is not democratic competition. That is a precursor to conflict.

And conflict, once it escalates, does not stay contained.

If we care about democracy—if we take national security seriously—we have to rebuild the habits that make democratic systems work: dialogue, restraint, accountability, and a shared commitment to resolving differences without violence.

That starts with something simple, and increasingly rare: talking to one another.

Real conversation. Not to force agreement, but to build understanding. I don't know if we'll get there. But I know that choosing not to try is itself a choice — and one with consequences we are already living with.