(NewsNation) — Stopping hateful political rhetoric spread by “fake news media” is the only way to prevent another attempted assassination, political activist David Bossie tells “NewsNation Prime.”
Bossie, a former deputy Trump campaign manager, believes journalists and the Biden campaign itself are to blame for an increasingly violent political landscape which culminated in Saturday’s fatal shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
The imperative next move, Bossie said, is for the candidates to not just speak national unity but enforce it.
President Joe Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address on Sunday night calling for just that: “Politics must never be a literal battlefield, and, God forbid, a killing field. There is no place in America for this type of violence.”
Trump on Truth Social said Sunday, “UNITE AMERICA!”. The former president will get his chance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which begins Monday, July 15.
“I think what [Trump’s] hoping is to dial back the nasty, hate-filled rhetoric,” Bossie said.
“This week, Joe Biden, and his team said, ‘Let’s put the bullseye on Donald Trump,’ that came from the Biden camp. That is, that’s not been being in my opinion talked about enough,” Bossie added. That’s in reference to comments Biden made prior to the shooting, as reported by MSN.
Obama’s former speechwriter Terry Szuplat offered advice for all Americans on LinkedIn.
“We can stop describing fellow Americans we disagree with as ‘enemies’ who need to be ‘destroyed’ or ‘crushed,'” Szuplat writes. “We can stop whipping up audiences to “fight” and “take back our country.”
Other advice includes don’t demonize, don’t dehumanize and don’t identify by party rather than nationality.
“Framing complex issues on which reasonable people can disagree in absolutist terms becomes a license to use any means necessary to ensure that ‘good’—at least as the speaker perceives it—prevails, no matter what the cost,” the post reads.