Radio host Charlamagne tha God is accusing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) of using the attempted assassination of former President Trump to “score points.”
“I just been taking it all in and I want to say to Mike Johnson and JD Vance, that you can’t honestly have a conversation about dangerous rhetoric that leads to political violence without discussing the dangerous rhetoric that has come out of President Donald Trump’s mouth and his social media,” Charlamagne said Monday on “The Breakfast Club” radio show, hours before Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate.
A gunman opened fire at a Trump rally on Saturday and grazed the former president with a bullet before he was killed by the Secret Service, prompting questions about and criticism of the agency.
A rally attendee was also killed, and two others were critically injured, according to the Secret Service. No motive for the incident has been determined yet.
Johnson had urged people to “turn the rhetoric down” following the shooting, while Vance suggested it was the Biden team’s talking points that led to the shooting.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance said on the social platform X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Charlamagne tha God said that the two lawmakers were ignoring Trump’s own lengthy history of inflammatory rhetoric.
“Mike Johnson said everyone needs to turn the rhetoric down. The question I would ask Mike Johnson is, ‘Who is everyone?’ For him and JD Vance to make comments like that and not acknowledge the countless times Donald Trump has said things that have led to violence or could lead to violence is disingenuous,” he said.
“And it’s them playing campaign games, it’s them politicizing this situation because of course, it is a presidential election year. They, like many politicians, Republicans and Democrats, are using this is an opportunity to score points on the opposition. Real leaders would be using this as an opportunity to actually bring people together,” he added.
He specifically pointed to Trump’s comments about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband after he was attacked in his San Francisco home in 2022.
“There has been a real unserious attitude in regards to political violence in this country. When a nut-ass [follower] of Donald Trump came to Nancy Pelosi, his house, and attacked her with a hammer, Trump made fun of it,” he said.
The Hill has reached out to Vance’s office for comment. Johnson’s office pointed The Hill to public statements the Speaker has made about the shooting since Saturday.