Top Republicans on Friday condemned Vice President Kamala Harris for calling Donald Trump a “fascist” — even though Trump recently used the same word to describe Harris.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) claimed in a joint statement that using the F-word against Trump could lead to another assassination attempt on the former president.
“When you label a political opponent ‘fascist’ you risk inviting another potential murderer to rob voters of their choice before Election Day,” Johnson and McConnell said.
In their statement, Johnson and McConnell chose to ignore Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, such as his frequent statements that Harris is destroying the country, that his political opponents are an internal enemy of the United States, and that recent immigrants have ‘bad genes’ and “ Poisoning the blood of our country.”
Last week, Trump even called Harris a fascist. And he has used the word repeatedly to describe his political opponents in general.
“Kamala destroyed our border. She has destroyed our economy,” Trump said last week at an Oct. 18 rally in Detroit, Michigan, before claiming Harris helped create the “defund the police” movement.
“Anyone who wants to expose the police, even for one day, we don’t want, we don’t want them. They are not worthy to be president of the United States,” Trump said. “If you have that ideology – and she does, then she’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, whatever you want.”
Two days earlier, Trump called his political opponents ‘the enemy from within’ a Fox News interview.
‘They are very dangerous. They are Marxists and communists and fascists, and they are sick,” he said.
Trump also called his opponents fascists during a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 15.
“We will put our country first. We will put the communists, Marxists and fascists last and they will always remain last,” he said.
This week Harris said “yes” when asked if she agreed with Trump’s former chief of staff that Trump meets the dictionary definition of a fascist.
“It is a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, violent suppression of opposition and belief in a natural social hierarchy,” said John Kelly, a former Navy general who served as Trump’s White House. chief of staff longer than anyone else, told The New York Times this week.
“So in my experience, these are certainly the kinds of things that he thinks would work better when it comes to governing America,” Kelly said.
Another retired general, Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump “fascist to the core.”
Harris pointed out that Trump suggested that “termination of the Constitution‘ in 2022 and his description of political opponents as internal enemies.
“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power,” she said this week.
After losing the 2020 presidential election to President Joe Biden, Trump incited a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the election results. Dozens of police officers were injured and more than 1,500 people have been charged with crimes over the attack.
But Republicans have argued that some Democratic criticism of Trump could incite violence after a gunman grazed Trump’s ear in an assassination attempt in July. Speaker Johnson suggested, without evidence, that Biden’s description of Trump as a “threat to democracy” led to the attack; the gunman was killed immediately and investigators have discovered no political motive.
Johnson and McConnell claimed Friday that a note left by a second would-be assassin, who was caught lurking with an assault rifle on Trump’s golf course, suggested he was inspired by Democratic rhetoric.
“The man caught in an ambush in Florida left others with a chilling cry to take up arms: ‘It’s now up to you to finish the job,’” they wrote. “Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive power. But first she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions.”
