Sen. Mark Warner nails it:
“I also think it is a sad commentary on our political system when we have candidates for federal office, and for that matter candidates for governorships that at least give tacit agreement about violence. When the kind of language that has been used, where you declare your political opponent an enemy, where you are disrespectful; even some local politicians have been extraordinarily disrespectful to this attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband Paul. I don’t get it. I don’t get how you can, we live in a country that democracy is about we have different ideas, we should be able to argue about those ideas without questioning each others faith, trust in country, basic integrity. I think it’s gone way too far…
…I hope we don’t have to get to a circumstance where every member of Congress has to travel with some level of security, because I feel that part of our job is to be accessible to our constituents…I do know that a step in the right direction would be an awful lot of lowering of rhetoric, and some of the just plain wacky, crazy stuff…that is being said, when you’ve got election deniers…the amount of venom that has been launched against Nancy Pelosi over the years. I think she’s probably gotten more grief than Barack Obama, Joe Biden and maybe Donald Trump all rolled into one, and then suddenly we’re surprised that slightly deranged people take that language and say, well, if she’s this bad, I’m going to act on it. Anybody that argues and uses that kind of terminology, I believe they bear some level of responsibility…Our country is based on the fact that we all have a right to disagree with each other…to argue strongly our causes, but that arguing strongly our causes should not extend to making personal threats that slightly crazy people then would take into reality and then act upon.”
The truth is, the attack on Paul Pelosi is the awful consequence of increasingly violent political rhetoric. When election deniers, insurrectionists, and calls to violence are given a platform, democracy itself and the lives of political officials are in danger. pic.twitter.com/nf4i7nK99D
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) November 2, 2022
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