Scalise: Political Violence Has to End

Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined CBS News' CBS Mornings following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Leader Scalise stressed that Americans cannot turn to political violence, but instead should follow Charlie's example and turn to civil debate and the ballot box.
    
On engaging in civil discourse:

“It's so sad for so many reasons. Charlie was somebody we all respected. Charlie was somebody that inspired young people, and not just young people, millions of people to get involved in politics, even people who didn't agree with him. But it was partly because he did engage with people, as you mentioned, in discourse. Even if people disagreed with him, he wasn't calling them names. He would engage and talk about the differences. We've got to get back to that. We cannot let what happened yesterday be the norm. Unfortunately, we've seen politics degrading, where some people feel if they disagree with you politically, they've got to try to go and eliminate those people. That is not what America is. We solve our differences at the ballot box. It's just sad that what happened yesterday in Utah did happen. I sure support law enforcement in their efforts to catch the shooter, and I'm confident they will. But it's just such a sad loss for our country.”

On Leader Scalise’s personal experience with violence:

“Yesterday was a tough day. I mean, as I'm processing what happened to Charlie, and he hadn't passed away yet, but you could see from the videos that were out there, it was a bad shot. I'm praying for his family, and I think we all need to keep Charlie's family, my gosh, that beautiful young family in our prayers. But then we had votes on the House floor, and we were on the House floor for about an hour and a half. It was hard to focus because my mind just kept going back to Charlie and his family.

“Surely went back to 2017 and the shooting where a crazed gunman tried to kill me and about a dozen other members of Congress because of our political beliefs. You just don't want, and this can't be allowed to be acceptable. We all have to denounce what happened yesterday and all resolve to do better. Our friends that we know that maybe get more vitriolic. You can be angry about politics, but you don't express that violently.”

On denouncing political violence:

“What we all need to do is, number one, recognize one of the greatest things in America is that we do have differences and that we can express them. There are countries where you can't. You'll be executed in the street for disagreeing with your government. So number one, celebrate the fact that we have differences and we can freely express them. And don't allow anybody to try to threaten somebody, to try to physically attack somebody for their differences. And that's not just all of us in politics. We clearly need to do better. I share that with my colleagues all the time. We're going to have differences. Don't make them personal. Don't try to demonize. You almost make somebody a character, a meme, instead of a human being. That's what we all are, and that's what Charlie was.”

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