Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) claimed during an interview over the weekend that the Democrat Party’s extreme rhetoric targeting former President Donald Trump has not contributed to the assassination attempts on his life.
Fetterman made the remarks during a Sunday interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press” with Kristen Welker after there have been two serious attempts on Trump’s life, including one last weekend that involved a Democrat donor who was hiding on Trump’s golf course with a rifle.
Welker brought up remarks from Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who said that the attempts were being incited by extreme rhetoric from Democrats, who have for years labeled Trump as an existential threat to democracy, the U.S., and the world.
“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump, in the last couple of months,” Vance said. “I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Somebody’s going to get hurt by it.”
Fetterman dismissed Vance’s concerns about how extreme the remarks are coming from the Democrat Party and mocked him.
“Who’s actually listening to what Vance says? It’s been months already. No one’s really listening to him anymore. You know, he has developed a kind of reputation to say dumb things, pointless things, and offend everybody,” Fetterman said. “And he’s been picked as the most unpopular pick in history. But no one’s listening to him. I’m certainly not. And here we are right now.”
Welker pushed back on Fetterman, asking him to address the substance of what he said about extreme rhetoric leading to political violence.
“Now, that’s absolutely absurd,” Fetterman claimed. “Every Democrat condemned the assassination attempts, and I did as well, too. And you know, they’re talking about eating the dogs and saying outlandish kind of things. Now, let’s just have a serious conversation about this election, not talking about the kind of empty kind of rhetoric from somebody like JD Vance.”
In the next breath he said that he said that he supported Vice President Kamala Harris saying that she would shoot someone if they broke into her house, something that her campaign later claimed was a joke.
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