The first few minutes of President Trump’s Oval Office address after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week followed the conventional presidential playbook. He praised the victim, asked God to watch over his family and talked mournfully of “a dark moment for America.”

上周查理·柯克遇刺后，特朗普总统在椭圆形办公室发表讲话的开头几分钟还遵循着常规的总统套路。他向遇难者表达了敬意，祈求上帝保佑其家人，哀伤地提及“这是美国的黑暗时刻”。

Then he tossed the playbook aside, angrily blaming the murder on the American left and vowing revenge.

随后，他便抛开了套路，愤怒地将这起谋杀归咎于美国左派并誓言报复。

That was stark even for some viewers who might normally be sympathetic. When Mr. Trump appeared later on Fox News, a host noted that there were “radicals on the right,” just as there were “radicals on the left,” and asked, “How do we come back together?” The president rejected the premise. Radicals on the right were justified by anger over crime, he said. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he added. “And they’re vicious. And they’re horrible.”

即便是对一些通常可能持同情态度的观众来说，此番言论也显得刺耳。特朗普后来做客福克斯新闻时，一位主持人提到“右翼有激进分子”，就像“左翼也有激进分子”，并问道“我们该如何重新团结起来”。总统否定了这个前提。他说，右翼激进分子的愤怒源于对犯罪问题的不满，是合理的。“左翼激进分子才是问题所在，”他还说。“他们恶毒又可怕。”

Mr. Trump has long made clear that coming together is not the mission of his presidency. In an era of deep polarization in American society, he rarely talks about healing. While other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all the people. He acts as president of red America and the people who agree with him, while those who do not are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.

长期以来，特朗普都明确表示团结并非其总统任期的使命。在这个美国社会严重分裂的时代，他很少谈及弥合分歧。其他总统在国家危机时刻通常会试图降温，而特朗普却在火上浇油。他不认同总统应为全体人民服务这一传统理念。他扮演的是红色美国以及认同他的人的总统，而那些不认同他的人则被描绘成敌人和叛徒，理应遭到报复。

“The left has declared war on America,” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist and a leading voice in the MAGA movement, said in a text message on Saturday. “Trump is a wartime president now focused on eradicating domestic terrorists like ANTIFA,” Mr. Bannon added, referring to the antifascist movement.

“左派已向美国宣战，”前特朗普首席策略师、“让美国恢复伟大荣光”运动的核心人物史蒂芬·班农周六在短信中称，“特朗普现在是战时总统，专注于铲除‘反法西斯运动’(ANTIFA)这类国内恐怖分子。”

特朗普总统长期以来一直明确表示，团结并非其总统任期内的使命。

The notion of Mr. Trump as a wartime president in a war against some of his own people speaks to just how different his presidency is. Campaigning last year to reclaim power four years after his re-election defeat, Mr. Trump dispensed with the usual bromides about national unity, and instead declared that the biggest threat to the United States was “the enemy from within.”

将特朗普视为对抗部分国民的战时总统，这恰恰说明了他的总统任期是多么与众不同。去年，为重夺权力而竞选时，这位四年前败选的总统摒弃了惯常的国家团结说辞，宣称美国最大的威胁来自“内部敌人”。

He vowed “retribution” against those who in his view have betrayed him or the country, and he has spent the first eight months of his second term exacting it against Democrats, wayward Republicans, estranged allies, law firms, universities, news outlets and anyone else he considers disloyal or excessively liberal.

他誓言要对那些在他看来背叛了他或国家的人进行“报复”，在第二任期的前八个月里，他将矛头对准民主党人、摇摆的共和党人、疏远的盟友、律师事务所、大学、新闻媒体，以及所有他认为不忠或过于自由派的人，将报复付诸行动。

He sees a country riven into two ideological and political camps: one that supports him and one that does not. He governs accordingly. In recent days, he has vowed to order troops into cities run by Democrats, while sending money in the form of disaster relief to states run by Republicans.

在他眼中，国家已分裂为两个意识形态和政治阵营：一个支持他，一个反对他。他的施政也依此展开。近日，他扬言要下令军队进驻民主党人执政的城市，同时以救灾名义向共和党执政的州拨款。

This viewpoint reflects Mr. Trump’s own history and personality, born out of an us-against-them, winners-and-losers approach to life that carried him through decades in business, reality television and eventually politics. He is not comfortable as a comforter. He prefers a fight; he needs an enemy. And with Democrats fractured and leaderless, he is positioning himself as the scourge of an American left that has, he contends, grown radical beyond recognition.

这种观点反映了特朗普自身的经历和性格，源于他那种非友即敌、非赢即输的人生态度——这种态度伴随他走过数十年的商界生涯、真人秀电视圈，最终进入政坛。他不擅长扮演安慰者的角色，更偏爱斗争，也需要敌人。而在民主党分裂且群龙无首之际，他将自己定位为美国左派的克星，称左派已经激进到面目全非。

“This has been consistent from the beginning,” Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, said of Mr. Trump’s escalatory reaction to the assassination of Mr. Kirk. “It’s not a tactic. It’s not a stratagem. It’s who he is and how he sees the world, in this Manichaean way. The left — the ‘radical left’ as he always wants to call it — is evil, and this is another opportunity to establish that, no matter what the facts are.”

“从一开始，他的反应就如此，”比尔·克林顿总统的前演讲稿撰写人杰夫·谢索尔在谈及特朗普对柯克遇刺事件的升级反应时表示，“这不是策略，也不是计谋。这就是他的本性，他以这种非黑即白的方式看待世界。左派——他总爱称之为‘激进左派’——是邪恶的，而这次事件不过是又一个佐证这一观点的机会，无论事实真相如何。”

人们在犹他州奥勒姆市参加查理·柯克的纪念仪式。

Plenty of left-wing voices online have fueled the divisions. Within hours of Mr. Kirk’s death, Americans of all stripes began pointing fingers at each other, even before a suspect had been caught or any motivation had been firmly determined. Mr. Trump and other allies of Mr. Kirk’s, who were distraught at the senseless killing of a 31-year-old rising star on the right they knew and liked, expressed roiling indignation at comments that gave the impression of cheering or rationalizing the murder of someone over political views.

网络上的大量左翼声音也在加剧分裂。柯克去世后几小时，嫌疑人还未抓到，动机也未查明，不同立场的美国人就已开始互相指责。特朗普及柯克的其他盟友对这位31岁右翼新星的无端遇害感到悲痛，他们熟识并且欣赏柯克，对于那些看似为“因政治观点而杀人”叫好或辩解的言论，他们表达了强烈的愤慨。

Most national Democratic elected leaders joined Republicans in denouncing the killing and calling for an end to the political violence that has erupted across the ideological spectrum in recent years. But while Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, a Republican, made a pained plea for Americans to come together, the president expressed anger, declaring that “we just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics,” though he also made a point of urging “nonviolence.”

多数民主党籍的全国性民选官员与共和党人一道对这起杀戮予以谴责，并呼吁终结近年来在各意识形态阵营爆发的政治暴力。但犹他州州长、共和党人斯宾塞·考克斯痛心地呼吁美国人团结起来的同时，总统却表达了愤怒，宣称要“狠狠教训”那些“激进左派疯子”——尽管他也特意强调“非暴力”。

“I’m afraid the ship has sailed, at least for now, over an era in which politicians could heal a nation with their words,” said Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary on Sept. 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush faced his greatest crisis and pulled the nation together against a common foreign enemy.

“恐怕至少就目前而言，政治人士能用言语治愈国家的时代已经过去了，”阿里·弗莱舍说。2001年9月11日，乔治·W·布什总统面临着重大危机，要将全国团结起来对抗共同的外国敌人，弗莱舍那时正是白宫新闻秘书。

Mr. Fleischer, who supports Mr. Trump, said the current president has been the target of so much hatred that no one would credit him for a calm response, were he to offer one. “The vitriol against President Trump from the left is so deep that there is not a syllable, word, sentence or paragraph Donald Trump could say that would mollify them,” he said. “Trump’s mantra is ‘fight, fight, fight,’ so no one should be surprised by his reaction.”

支持特朗普的弗莱舍表示，现任总统已成为众多仇恨的目标，即便他做出冷静回应，也不会有人买账。“左翼对特朗普总统的怨恨太深了，无论他说一个音节、一个词、一句话还是一段话，都无法平息他们的怒火，”他说。“特朗普的信条是‘战斗、战斗、再战斗’，所以他的反应不足为奇。”

特朗普总统既不邀请民主党领袖前往白宫进行会谈，也不向他们通报重大国家安全事件。

Every other recent president has said that he saw his role as transcending partisanship at least some of the time, to serve as leader of all Americans — even those who disagreed with him. George H.W. Bush talked of ushering in a “kinder and gentler nation.” Mr. Clinton vowed to be the “repairer of the breach.” The younger Mr. Bush spoke of being “a uniter, not a divider.” Barack Obama rejected the idea of a red America and blue America, saying there was only “the United States of America.” Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for ending “this uncivil war.”

近年来的其他总统都曾表示，至少在某些时候，他们认为自己的角色应超越党派之争，成为全体美国人的领袖——即便是那些不认同自己的人。乔治·H·W·布什总统提出要打造一个“更友善、更温和的国家”；克林顿誓言要做“裂痕的修复者”；小布什称自己“是团结者，不是分裂者”；奥巴马反对“红色美国”与“蓝色美国”的划分，强调只有“美利坚合众国”；拜登呼吁结束“这场不文明的战争”。

None of them succeeded at achieving such lofty aspirations, and each of them to different degrees played the politics of division at times. Politics, after all, is about division — debating big ideas vigorously until one side wins an election or carries the vote in Congress. But none of them practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump, for whom it has been the defining characteristic of his time on the national stage.

他们都未能实现这些崇高的理想，且都在不同程度上操弄过分裂政治的手段。毕竟，政治本就与分歧相关——激烈辩论重大理念，直到一方赢得选举或在国会投票中获胜。但没有人像特朗普那样，如此激烈且持续地践行分裂政治，这已成为他在国家政治舞台上的标志性特征。

It was Mr. Bannon, after all, who said after Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory that unity was not the goal. “We didn’t win an election to bring the country together,” he said then.

毕竟，正是班农在特朗普2016年胜选后表示，团结并非目标。“我们赢得选举，不是为了团结这个国家，”他当时说道。

And Mr. Trump, who has never had the support of a majority in any of the three campaigns he has run or in any approval rating by Gallup, has long focused on catering to his own core supporters. When he talks about his poll ratings, he often cites approval just among Republicans.

特朗普在他参加的三次竞选及盖洛普的任何民意调查中从未获得过多数支持，他长期以来专注于迎合自己的核心支持者。当他谈及民调数据时，往往引用的只是共和党内的支持率。

“If I take care of the base, everything else will take care of itself,” he once told Anthony Scaramucci, a former ally who briefly served in Mr. Trump’s first-term White House.

“只要守住基本盘，其他一切都会迎刃而解，”他曾对安东尼·斯卡拉穆奇说。斯卡拉穆奇是他的前盟友，曾在特朗普第一任期短暂在白宫任职。

While he made few nods toward working across the aisle in his first term, Mr. Trump has all but abandoned any efforts at bipartisanship in his second. He does not invite Democratic leaders to the White House for talks, nor does he brief them on major national security events.

尽管他在第一任期也几乎未曾展现出跨党派合作的姿态，但在第二任期，他几乎完全放弃了所有两党合作的努力。他既不邀请民主党领袖到白宫会谈，也不向他们通报重大国家安全事件。

His critics fear that Mr. Trump will now use the Kirk assassination to go further on liberal organizations and institutions, a view encouraged in ominous social media posts by Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and a leader of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

批评者担心，特朗普现在会利用柯克遇刺事件进一步打压自由派组织和机构。总统副幕僚长、特朗普政府移民限制政策的主导者史蒂芬·米勒在社交媒体上发布的不祥帖子更强化了这种担忧。

“In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority — child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees — have been deeply and violently radicalized,” Mr. Miller wrote on Saturday, suggesting that their responses to Mr. Kirk’s killing were unacceptable. “The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”

“近日我们发现，有多少身居要职的美国人——儿童服务工作者、法律书记员、医院护士、教师、政府工作人员，甚至国防部雇员——已经遭受了深度暴力激进思想的侵蚀，”米勒周六写道，并表示这些人对柯克遇害的反应令人无法接受，“这是一个庞大、有组织的灌输体系造成的后果。”

Mr. Trump is certainly right that his opponents have called him a “fascist” and “Nazi.” But his outrage at incendiary rhetoric is situational. In the same Fox News interview last week in which he complained about excesses by the left, he referred to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and front-runner for mayor of New York, as a “communist.” Even more than in his first term, Mr. Trump lately has referred to political rivals and journalists as “evil.”

特朗普说得没错，他的反对者确实称他为“法西斯”和“纳粹”。但他对煽动性言论的愤怒是分情况的。上周在福克斯新闻的同一次采访中，他抱怨左派过激的同时，将纽约市市长民主党社会主义者候选人佐兰·曼达尼称为“共产主义者”。比起第一任期，特朗普近来更频繁地声称政治对手和记者“邪恶”。

Even his anger at being called a fascist depends on who says it and whether they take it back. His own vice president, JD Vance, once called him “America’s Hitler,” a remark that he later disavowed and managed to overcome to win his way onto Mr. Trump’s ticket.

即使他因被称为法西斯主义者而愤怒，也取决于说话者是谁，以及对方是否收回言论。他自己的副总统万斯曾称他是“美国的希特勒”，后来万斯收回了这话，并成功跻身特朗普的竞选团队。

国民警卫队成员在华盛顿的托马斯·杰斐逊纪念堂巡逻。

Likewise, the president’s concern for security against political violence has depended on who was threatened. He pardoned some 1,500 supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including those who assaulted police officers and called for the execution of his own vice president, Mike Pence. At one point, he declined to rule out pardoning the people convicted of a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.

同样，总统对政治暴力威胁的担忧也取决于受威胁的对象。他赦免了约1500名2021年1月6日冲击国会山的支持者，包括那些袭击警察、呼吁处决他自己的副总统彭斯的人。他一度拒绝排除赦免那些策划绑架密歇根州民主党州长格雷琴·惠特默的人。

He complained during last year’s campaign that he needed more Secret Service protection, then took office and stripped government security for people he disliked, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the former national security adviser John R. Bolton. Just last month, Mr. Trump rescinded extended Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris.

去年竞选期间，他抱怨自己需要更多特勤局保护，上任后却剥夺了他不喜欢的人的政府安保，包括安东尼·福奇博士、马克·米利将军、前国务卿迈克·庞皮欧和前国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿。就在上个月，特朗普撤销了为前副总统哈里斯提供的延长特勤局保护。

But with so much menace in the air, even Mr. Trump at times in recent days tried to make a distinction between violence and retribution of another kind. With some of his supporters anxious for revenge after Mr. Kirk’s death, Mr. Trump offered a caveat. “Well,” he said, “you want revenge at the voter box.”

但在众多威胁弥漫的氛围中，最近以来，就连特朗普有时也试图区分暴力与其他形式的报复。面对一些支持者在柯克遇害后急于复仇的情绪，特朗普给出了一个附加说明：“嗯，你们应该在投票箱里复仇。”