House Speaker Mike Johnson said political leaders should not call their opponents “enemies” — but declined to criticize Donald Trump for his long-running habit of doing exactly that.
Johnson urged lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to respectfully engage with each other and to “turn down the temperature and the violent rhetoric” following the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday.
“Leaders cannot call their political opponents Nazis and fascists and enemies of the state because they disagree with their policy priorities. I mean, this is something we should have learned in grade school,” Johnson said during Tuesday’s weekly House Republican Leadership press conference on Capitol Hill.
“This type of language spurs on depraved people, deranged people who take that as a cue. And this tragic phenomenon played out this week in Utah,” he added.
When asked by CNN if he would urge Trump, who has long labeled Democrats as “evil” and the “enemy,” to change his own rhetoric, Johnson said the president “has been called the most despicable names by people on the left for a long, long time.”
“Look, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric all around and what I’m trying to advance here is the idea that we can have vigorous policy debates,” he added, according to CNN.
Johnson then pointed to Kirk, a devoted ally of Trump, as an example, saying, “We can have vehement disagreements on policy, but it shouldn’t be personal.”
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to bring people to our mode of thinking, and it’s more effective that way when you handle it that way. And I think Charlie was a great example of that,” he added.
The exchange came as Trump and other MAGA leaders have insisted that the left is more responsible for the recent spike in political violence than the right after Kirk, 31, was killed while speaking to a Utah college campus.
“Well, the problem is on the left,” Trump said to reporters outside Air Force One on Tuesday, according to Fox News.
“The problem is on the left if you look at the problem – it’s not on the right like some people like to say, on the right. The problem we have is on the left. When you look at the agitators, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left, that’s not the right,” he said.
Kirk’s killing during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, which was caught on horrifying footage and blasted across social media, has been deeply polarizing.
In the days following his death, Republicans have been demanding action against anyone who has reacted to the killing by “praising, rationalising, or making light” of it or by “belittling” his memory.
Meanwhile, Kirk’s suspected killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was formally charged with aggravated murder and several other charges on Tuesday.
He will face the death penalty if convicted, officials said.
