On Wednesday’s “AC360,” Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) said that he “would really urge the President of the United States to speak out against” rhetoric from some on the right in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Goldman said, “I didn’t know Charlie Kirk personally. I followed some of what he said. I disagreed with almost everything he said, but he was exactly what our politics is all about, which is an exchange of ideas, the desire to convince others, to persuade others that your view of whatever a situation is, whatever a policy is, is the right one. And this is heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. And I think that, not only were all of the members of Congress very upset and saddened, but, to some degree, I think we’re all scared. This is escalating. This is not going the other direction. We saw the shootings in Minnesota not too long ago. The political violence is going in the opposite direction of where it needs to go. And I think we can all and should all agree that we should work out our differences in the public square, and that’s how our system should work. But the idea that you would disagree with someone to such a degree that you would commit violence against them is just beyond the pale. And I don’t have a solution for how it will stop or should stop, but it really has to stop.”
Host Anderson Cooper then said, “That’s certainly not the message we’re hearing from some in the sort of far-right podcasting sphere, who make money off this — but — off this kind of rhetoric. They’re talking about war, that there’s a war targeting conservatives.”
Goldman responded, “Yeah. Look, it’s — that is incredibly dangerous. I am really, really disappointed. And what I would urge, I would really urge the President of the United States to speak out against that. I don’t view this as an issue of the right or the left. I think we’ve seen political violence on both sides of the spectrum. And it’s not that one is worse than the other. Obviously, the efforts to assassinate the President were horrific and were absolutely unacceptable, should have been unacceptable. But we can’t get in a tit for tat here, where we’re just going one after the other after the other, because our system will completely break down. This is already a breakdown of our democracy. I think Congressman Kinzinger said it right, but our entire system of government will break down, and you will have, certainly, nobody who wants to do this job. It’s already ill-advised for many, given the vitriol, the discourse that you see. But when violence gets involved, then it’s just a totally different animal. And I hope these far-right podcasters come to their senses and recognize that this is not war, we are Americans at bottom. And we may be Republicans, we may be Democrats, but we do not divide this entire country based on political ideology, and we can’t do that. And we have to come back and remember that we are all Americans in the greatest country on earth, and that we may disagree on how we move forward, but we all want our country to move forward.”
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