Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pointing fingers over whether heated political rhetoric is contributing to violence in the wake of Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on former President Trump.
It’s the second time the fierce debate has ignited in as many months, and lawmakers are getting more personal.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — who was critically wounded by a left-wing gunman during a 2017 congressional baseball practice — was notably passionate and forceful in a weekly press conference as he accused Democrats of being complicit in the assassination attempts.
“There is very specific rhetoric we can now point to that we know is triggering some of these people who are unhinged, who take it the wrong way, and want to carry out what is being sent to them by Democrats talking about this,” Scalise said.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), meanwhile said that “everyone needs to turn down the rhetoric,” but pointed specifically to Democrats.
“When members of Congress or the nominee for president of the Democratic Party says that President Trump must be eliminated, or that he’s a threat to democracy, or they compare him to Hitler – there are people who are unstable, and it makes them do crazy things,” Johnson said.
Democrats rejected such accusations, arguing their attacks on Trump are focused on specific policies and the threat they think he poses to America’s democratic traditions. Those criticisms, they say, are perfectly fair — particularly in an election year — and they have no intention of abandoning their warning to voters.
“House Democrats are completely on the same page that there is no place for political violence. We will not encourage it; we will not support it; we will push back against it every time,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), head of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters in the Capitol. “But we will also push back against the lies that are told in an election season.”
Democrats are also quick to note Trump’s own history of violent rhetoric, including his defense of white supremacists, his threats of direct physical violence against protestors at his rallies and his attacks on journalists as enemies of the state.
Democrats have also long accused Trump of inciting the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed into the building in a failed attempt to overturn his election defeat months earlier.
“Listen to the stuff he says. Listen to the stuff they say,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said.
“They’re desperate. They’re looking for ways to distract from the fact that Trump is losing support every day,” he continued. “If they want to go down that road, then you could blame Trump – or you could blame Republicans – for a lot of the bad things that have happened in this country based on what they’ve said.”
The suspect arrested in connection with the incident outside Trump’s Florida golf course on Sunday, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, had a checkered history, including a felony conviction in North Carolina after an armed standoff with police in 2002. Routh also claimed to have voted for Trump in 2016, but more recently he’d shifted his energies to defending Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022. In a self-published book last year, Routh called for Trump’s assassination because the former president had pulled out of a previous nuclear deal with Iran, according to reports.
The incident came roughly two months after Trump survived an assassination attempt during an outdoor rally in Butler, Pa., where a lone gunman fired eight shots from a nearby rooftop.
Democrats say the common thread linking the two episodes is a simple one: both would-be assassins suffered from severe mental health issues.
“People need to be mindful of the words they use. But these people were deranged, who went after Trump both times. And [Republicans] know that,” McGovern said.
Republicans, though, maintain that Democrats’ verbal attacks on Trump are pushing those would-be assassins to act.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) echoed those concerns when she revealed Wednesday that her office was the subject of “a very serious shooting threat.”
“The left continues to push a radical agenda of hate and rhetoric that leads to violence. Just hours before this threat to my office, we saw how there was a second assassination attempt on President Trump’s life,” Luna said in a statement. “We will NOT be threatened or intimidated by those using violence to push their narrative and try and win an election.”
Scalise read specific quotes from Democrats in Wednesday’s press conference that he claimed could trigger an “unhinged” individual.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Scalise noted, had said last year that Trump “is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated.”
Goldman apologized for the remark the day after he made it, saying that while Trump “must be defeated, I certainly wish no harm to him and do not condone political violence.” And in the Capitol on Wednesday, Goldman pointed the finger back at Trump.
“I think the Republicans are grasping at straws to blame the rise in political violence on Democrats while ignoring what happened on Jan. 6; the rhetoric that Trump uses more than anyone else,” Goldman said.
Goldman noted that Trump had said “fight” immediately after the first assassination attempt in July: “What does he think ‘fight, fight, fight’ means?”
Scalise also pointed to a remark from Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) from last year saying Trump “needs to be shot” — but he did not mention that Plaskett seemed to have a verbal stumble, immediately saying “stopped” after she said “shot.”
Plaskett at the time knocked conservative media for taking “an instance where I misspoke and misrepresented it as though I advocate for violence–I unequivocally do not.” In the statement, Plaskett added that she wishes Trump “no ill will or harm, only that justice be served in his case.”
Plaskett on Wednesday defended her remarks, noting that she “said a word, and then in the next word corrected myself and went on to talk about the rhetoric of Donald Trump needing to be stopped.”
“It’s terrible that there have been assassination attempts on this president, in the same way that there have been assassination attempts on other presidents. And those are deranged individuals who need to be stopped,” Plaskett said. “But are we in a position in our country where our democracy and its continuation is at stake should things such as Project 2025 come into play if Donald Trump is in fact elected as the next president? Yes, and we’ll continue to say that.”
“Donald Trump’s presidency – his presidency – is a threat to our democracy,” she emphasized.
Scalise took the biggest aim at Vice President Kamala Harris, and her frequent warning — common among Democrats — that “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”
“The second shooter, attempted shooter, he was regurgitating the same language as Kamala,” Scalise said.
“So this is no longer a dog whistle, which it’s been on the left. It’s now being received by some unhinged people as a call to action when Democrats say this,” Scalise said. “Kamala needs to stop saying that President Trump is a threat to democracy. There are unhinged people that are taking that as a call to go and try to eliminate President Trump. She needs to stop it now.”
The White House and the Harris campaign did not immediately comment on Scalise’s remarks. After the Saturday incident, Harris said in a statement she was “deeply disturbed” and that she condemned political violence.
Democrats don’t agree that the common refrain about Trump is inflammatory.
“If someone were to say, Donald Trump’s a threat to democracy and someone should use violence against him, well, that’s completely inappropriate. But to say that calling someone a threat to democracy is inciting violence is preposterous,” Goldman said.
