Thursday at her weekly news conference, when asked about negative discourse playing a role in the shooting of Republicans practicing for a congressional charity baseball game, which critically injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Republicans began the current level of coarse political rhetoric attacking President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
She then pointed to then-candidate Donald Trump joking at a campaign rally, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Pelosi said, “Let’s all say, let’s examine our conscience, let’s see how we can rid ourselves of our negative attitudes that go to a place that is like this. We’ve had—it didn’t use to be this way. Somewhere in the 1990s, Republicans decided on the politics of personal destruction as they went after the Clintons and that is the provenance of it and is what has continued. Again, I feel as if we’re having a family moment that is very, very serious and we’re talking about things that we can say, the discussion—save the discussion for another day. When you have a president that says I can shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and nobody would care, when you have people saying beat them up and I’ll pay their legal fees, when you have all the assaults that are made on Hillary Clinton, for them to be so sanctimonious is something. I really am almost sad that I had to go down this path with you, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to have the fullest discussion of it. And it will be for another day. It will be for another day.”
(h/t WFB)
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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