GOP rep: Rhetoric ‘needs to come down across the board’

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) cautioned that political rhetoric “needs to come down across the board” in an appearance on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper” this week.

Host Jake Tapper showed Fitzpatrick a clip of Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) criticizing the left for calling people on the right “extremists,” “fascists” and “Nazis” during FBI Director Kash Patel’s Tuesday appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

“Check yourself,” Schmitt said. “And don’t give me this ‘both side’ bulls‑‑‑.”

“I think the rhetoric needs to come down across the board,” Fitzpatrick said after viewing the clip. “Nobody should be shouting in a committee hearing, nobody should be casting aspersions. This is the time, especially now, where we can draw a direct causal link between this incident and the rise of hate speech across America.”

The Tuesday hearing was Patel’s first appearance in front of lawmakers following the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was shot at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. 

Since Kirk’s death, Republicans have expressed outrage with Democrats and the media, alleging their rhetoric led to the shooting. 

President Trump said in a video posted four hours after Kirk’s death that the left’s comparison of figures such as Kirk to Nazis was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” 

Other Republicans, including Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.), Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), Rep. Derrick Van Orden (Wis.), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), have made similar statements. Greene wrote on X that the left had made it clear “they want all of us dead.”

Republican officials have targeted left-wing groups and people — including some who celebrated Kirk’s death online — in wake of his killing, prompting concern from freedom of speech advocates. 

Fitzpatrick said leaders needed to be “the calm, cool, collected ones” and “lower the volume and temperature of the discourse” during his appearance on Tapper’s show.

“I just think it’s incumbent upon every leader in this country, no matter what you’re leading, to be a responsible adult and understand the weight of your words,” he said. 

His remarks come at a time of heightened fear over political violence in the U.S. In additon to Kirk’s death, the past two years has seen Trump survive two apparent assassination attempts, and a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband being gunned down at their home.