MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a victim of a politically motivated shooting, said Tuesday Kamala Harris’ continued use of “violence-inciting rhetoric” against Donald Trump makes her “unfit” to be president.
The Louisiana Republican answered The Post’s questions after a fundraiser for GOP House hopeful Tom Barrett six miles north of Detroit in suburban Oakland County.
“That violence-inciting rhetoric is disgraceful, and I’ve called Kamala Harris out on that,” Scalise said. “It’s not that everybody’s doing it, it’s that she’s been doing it, and the language she’s been using has been regurgitated by the people who have tried to kill Donald Trump.”
The former president has been victim to two possible assassination attempts.
Trump was shot in the head July 13 during a speech in Butler, Pa.
Two months later, authorities arrested a gun-toting man who allegedly stalked and targeted Trump at his Florida golf course.
“You know when they call him ‘a threat to democracy,’ the attempted assassins have also used that very same language,” Scalise said.
“So they can’t anymore just claim that they don’t know that it’s inciting violence,” he added. “Their language is absolutely inciting violence, and yet they continue to do it. It’s one of the reasons why Kamala Harris is unfit to be the president of the United States.”
Scalise and three others, including a member of his US Capitol Police security team, were shot during a June 2017 practice for the annual congressional softball game, just months into the Trump presidency.
The congressman was rushed to hospital in critical condition and underwent months of recovery.
Shooter James Hodgkinson, 66, who was killed when officers responded, was a Bernie Sanders supporter who asked the political affiliation of those on the field — and experts concluded he was motivated by rhetoric that demonized Republicans.
A Department of Homeland Security behavioral analysis produced three months later found, “In the few years leading up to his attack, Hodgkinson made numerous written statements criticizing Republican policies and ideology, as well as statements directly criticizing specific public officials, including congressmen and former Republican Presidents of the United States.”
Scalise urged the vice president to tone down rhetoric that portrays Trump as a threat to democracy itself after both assassination attempts — but Harris hasn’t stopped.
From the official vice-presidential residence last week, she accused her opponent of admiring and following in the footsteps of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
Citing an Atlantic report — which Trump denies and multiple people dispute — claiming the ex-prez said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Harris declared: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
Scalise swung over to metro Detroit to support Tom Barrett, the Republican running to fill a Lansing-area seat in Michigan’s 7th District.
Barrett lost a tight race in 2022 to Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who’s now running for the state’s open Senate seat.
Barrett faces Curtis Hertel Jr. in a battle of former state lawmakers. The Republican said he likes his chances this time around — and the contrast with his opponent.
“He’s been a 22-year career ladder-climber,” Barrett told reporters. “I spent 22 years in service to the military.”
