Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough dismissed Republican running mate Senator JD Vance’s (R-OH) call for liberals to “tone down the rhetoric” as “gaslighting” that was “barely even worth responding to.”
Vance made the remarks in Atlanta on Monday night following Sunday’s foiled assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, which happened as the Republican nominee was playing golf in Florida.
During his speech Vance observed that Trump had faced two assassination attempts in recent months and that “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris” – seeing this as evidence that it was “the left” that “needs to tone down the rhetoric.” The senator called on liberals “to cut this crap out” before somebody gets hurt.
On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the hosts detailed how both Trump and Vance had blamed Democrats, the Biden administration and liberals, more generally, for rhetoric that inspired the shooter.
As host Mika Brzezinski read back Trump’s social media post from Monday night blasting President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for pushing “communist left rhetoric”, she remarked: >> “That’s not inflammatory, is it?”
Scarborough then ran back the clip of Vance in Atlanta, remarking: “Well, this is what you would call gaslighting.”
He went on to read aloud a lengthy excerpt from journalist Peter Baker’s analysis in the New York Times, which claimed that Trump seems to “inspire people to make threats or take actions, both for him and against him. He has long favored the language of violence in his political discourse.” Baker goes on to list Trump’s calls to violence against hecklers at his rallies, jokes about the “near fatal” attack on Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband and the January 6 Capitol riots.
Returning to his own take on the Trump-Vance characterization of liberal rhetoric in provoking violence, Scarborough said: “It’s barely even worth responding to, and I can say that on a personal level.”
He continued: “You know, him suggesting that I should be executed after he was angry at my Covid reporting, which basically was just reading his quotes over a period of six months’ time, agreeing that Liz Cheney should be set before a military tribunal because she endorsed Kamala Harris. Suggesting that violence should be done to others, and his supporters suggesting that the hosts of the ABC debate should be imprisoned. And he welcomes to Mar-a-Lago people who have racist beliefs, among other things, who are not democratic in their values.
Laying the blame with Trump, he added: “We’re talking about violence here. Again, the real introduction to violent rhetoric in America, in presidential campaigns, has been unprecedented since Trump first came onto the scene in 2016.”
Watch above on MSNBC.
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