Democratic Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett slammed Republicans for suggesting Democrats were to blame for the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Plaskett, a former House impeachment manager in a case against Trump, also called out the Republican presidential nominee for telling his supporters to “fight, fight, fight” just moments after a nearly-deadly bullet grazed his ear.
“That’s a ridiculous argument,” said Plaskett, a House delegate representing the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Government Weaponization of the Federal Government told theGrio that Democrats have “repeatedly” called for laws and policies to “remove violence in our society,” including tighter gun control legislation. She said the party also stood up against politically violent acts like pro-Trump rioters’ storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It’s so hypocritical for so many of my colleagues who walked around with AK-15 lapel pins … who have pushed for violence, who raised their fist at individuals who were trying to overthrow our government by violence,” said Plaskett. “Our rhetoric has been that President Trump, his policies, Project 2025, and many of the people around him are, in fact, a danger to our society, and the way to get rid of that is to vote him out.”
Though Trump called for “unity” in the hours after he was shot, as did President Joe Biden in three televised remarks, in the hours following the Trump rally shooting, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., accused Biden of “inciting an assassination.”
Former presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., wrote on X: “This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”
Plaskett noted that a bloodied Trump telling his thousands of supporters at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania to “fight” was “definitely not supportive of us trying to bring down the rhetoric.”
Recalling the former Republican president’s infamous message to a white nationalist group during a 2020 presidential debate against Biden, Plaskett said, “Telling individuals like the Proud Boys, ‘Stand back and stand by’ doesn’t help as well in tamping down that kind of rhetoric.”
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who told theGrio Saturday’s shooting was “jarring” for the Keystone State, noted that while Republicans are placing blame across the political aisle, Democrats have also experienced political violence and threats in past years.
“Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, two years ago, was really assaulted in their home. [Michigan] Governor Gretchen Whitmer had a kidnapping plot that almost happened,” Davis recalled. “I would caution folks to really take a moment and step back … I don’t think casting blame at this moment helps our democracy or helps anyone. I think we should let the investigators do their job.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, called for Biden to “immediately order” prosecutors to drop the criminal charges against Trump in two federal cases of election fraud and withholding classified documents. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, recently dismissed the latter case in a controversial ruling deemed as partisan by Democrats and legal experts.
“It seems repeatedly that her rhetoric is to support Donald Trump, not the rule of law,” said Plaskett.
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As for the call to drop charges against Trump, the congresswoman told theGrio, “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.” She added that it was a “ludicrous notion” to suggest the “judicial process stops” because of one lone gunman.
“We’ve got to follow the judicial process and the rules of law,” she urged.
When asked how the Trump shooting will change, if at all, how Democrats campaign against Trump and the Republican Party, Plaskett noted that she and her colleagues will keep the focus on the key national policies, like gun control, which she noted Republicans have refused to join Democrats in addressing.
“Republican policies have unfortunately caused … another death, and individuals who have been injured,” she said of Saturday’s shooting. “We’re going to talk about [President Biden] enforcing that through the policies that he had.”
Plaskett continued, “We’re going to continue to … go after [Trump] for his rhetoric as well as his damning policies on our democracy, whether that be Trump’s Project 2025, the things that he says at rallies and … his record as a former president.”
