Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) weighed in on Wednesday’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, VA that resulted in Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) in critical condition at a hospital in Washington, DC.
Sanford said we were “at an inflection point” and we needed to return to civility, or wind up in a “very, very bad spot.”
“Indeed, we’re at an inflection point,” Sanford said. “There are forces at play I’ve never seen before in roughly the 20 years I’ve been involved in politics. Joe and I came in together way back when. And it is indeed different. I think we have to watch out as a society because if we don’t watch out, civility is indeed a part of civilized government and an open political system. And if you let these forces play out, I think we end up at a very, very bad spot. I think what happened yesterday was symptomatic of it.”
He went on to blame President Donald Trump in part for the toxic climate that led to this shooting.
“[I] would argue that the president is at least in partially — not in any way totally — but partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed, whether it is what I saw at a senior center back home and people saying, ‘f-you, f-you and f-you’ to each other at a senior center, a retirement center and see each other play croquet the next day, or with what happened — not with what happened yesterday, but the fact that you know, you’ve got the top guy saying, ‘Well, I wish I could hit you in the face. And if not, why don’t you and I’ll pay your legal fees.’ That’s bizarre — we ought to call it as such.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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