House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are calling out Kamala Harris for “escalating” threats against former President Donald Trump by labeling him a “fascist” and promoting claims that he is like Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
“Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” Johnson (R-La.) and McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a joint statement Friday.
“We have both been briefed on the ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump by adversaries to the United States, and we call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats.”
Asked whether Trump, 78, was a “fascist” during a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, Harris, 59, nodded her head and replied: “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”
She and her campaign have also promoted claims made this week by former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly that the 45th president expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals.
The heightened rhetoric followed a summer of political violence, which saw the former president shot in the ear by a would-be assassin at a Pennsylvania campaign rally and nearly shot at by another while golfing at his West Palm Beach, Fla., resort.
“This summer, after the first attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in more than a century, President Biden insisted that ‘we can’t allow this violence to be normalized,’” said Johnson and McConnell. “In September, after President Trump escaped yet another close call, Vice President Harris acknowledged that ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.’”
“These words have proven hollow. In the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus,” they added. “Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over. The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility.”
“The man who was caught waiting in ambush in Florida left others with a chilling call to arms: ‘It is up to you now to finish the job,’” the Republican congressional leaders also said. “Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day.”