WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement officials arraigned a 31-year-old man on charges that he attempted to assassinate President Trump at the Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday night during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The defendant worked as an educator with high school students in Torrance, California.

Family members of the defendant said that he was a radical leftist, and similar claims circulated on social media platforms. The defendant used terms such as rapist and pedophile in reference to Trump.

Trump said that some writings sent by the defendant to family members revealed that he was "anti-Christian." Odette Yousef, an NPR domestic extremism correspondent, offered a different account of the writings. "I read these writings and I spoke with others who had, and there's nothing in it that appears anti-Christian," Yousef said.

Yousef also addressed the political characterization of the defendant's online material. "He was using terms like rapist or pedophile in reference to the president. But his content falls into a kind of mainstream left now," she said.

Jared Holt addressed the framing of the defendant in public discourse. "You've seen some of the typical, well, it's the radical left and their rhetoric. That's - they need to cool it down. But then you look at the social media profiles that have been attributed to the suspect, and they're really not that radical," Holt said.

Over the last decade, political violence in the U.S. has been increasing, and during that period it has overwhelmingly been associated with the far right. Data show that political violence from the left increased in the last year from a very low baseline over the last decade.

Many acts of political violence in the U.S. tie to false narratives that sometimes push people to act violently by creating a sense of urgency around a supposed crisis. Perpetrators of political violence often do not have a coherent political agenda or worldview and are more commonly experiencing personal crises or difficulties.