James Keivom
City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli’s remarks at Sunday’s City Hall event called by Mayor Adams to promote unity in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Two years ago I heard that Mayor Adams was interested in getting the DNC to come here to New York City this year.
As soon as I heard it, the first thing I did was I called up the mayor — actually, I texted him — and I called up some of his people and I said, “Make me a part of this, I want to be a part of this.”
People said, well, you’re a Republican, why do you want this?
Because when things are good for our city in terms of its economic viability, and when things celebrate our democracy, that’s something I want to be a part of.
Sometimes I’ve heard criticism that, being an outspoken conservative, why do I get along with Democrats so good?
Well, I’ll tell you why: The truth is, the worst thing I want to happen to them is to lose elections — to lose their jobs.
And that’s real: I want to beat them.
But that’s the worst thing I want to have happen to my political opponents.
That’s anger: I hear things that my political opponents might say that bother me.
Sometimes I think that they’ll have a bad impact on my family, our safety, our wallets — and yes, those things anger me.
Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing in politics.
It’s what motivated me to go hang flyers and knock on doors as a volunteer; it’s what motivated me to run for office.
People who are angry at the system are not the problem in politics.
Hate is the problem in politics.
The dehumanization of your political opponents is the problem in politics.
Anger’s always been around — look at the Federalist Papers, No. 10.
It talks about factionalism, about how broken and divided we are.
That’s anger, not hate.
Hate is what causes someone to be so desperate to prevent things that they see happening that they’ll fire at a man who’s a grandfather, a father.
They’ll stop an election by causing that person to die.
They’ll fire indiscriminately into a crowd of people with children, families, people who were just there because they like the candidate and rallies are kind of fun.
That’s the difference between hate and anger in politics.
When you focus on using your anger productively and running for office and bettering the community that you want to be a part of, those are positives.
I’m so thankful that we have a mayor and religious leaders here who — look, I’ll level with you, it’s easy for me to denounce this attack: I support Donald Trump.
It’s more difficult for other people to do that.
So I commend anyone who’s willing to come out and say, enough’s enough.
The rhetoric has got to cool. The rhetoric has got to cool.
Let’s use our anger and our political differences as the Founders intended: by having debates, by standing on our soapboxes, by offering different ideas and by encouraging people to vote.
When Trump raised his fist, I would encourage you — many of you who I imagine don’t particularly like him or may not vote for him — I hope you see his raising his fist as a defiant gesture against, not his political opponents, but against people who would use violence to silence our democracy.
He came out [Sunday] and said “Unite America.”
And that’s what I believe he meant by shaking his fist and saying “Fight!”
We have to fight for this democracy. We’ll see who wins in November, but we should all fight to preserve our democracy.
Joe Borelli (R-S.I.) is the minority leader of the New York City Council.