MSNBC anchor Alex Witt questioned Sunday whether former President Donald Trump and his campaign needed to tone down their rhetoric after the 2024 GOP nominee faced an apparent would-be assassin for the second time in three months.
Trump was playing a round and had reportedly just finished the fifth hole at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach when shots were fired, which were later confirmed to be from the scene where Secret Service agents engaged what the FBI is investigating as an assassination attempt on Trump.
At the time of the MSNBC discussion on Sunday’s Alex Witt Reports, the details were still not fully known and there was question whether Trump had been a target in the incident. Nevertheless, the conversation quickly went to the question of whether Trump’s rhetoric may have played a hand.
Witt asked MSNBC analyst and former Bush administration official Elise Jordan about the political implications ahead, to which Jordan replied that “heated rhetoric” has led to violence “on both sides of the aisle.”
“I think it’s just something that Democrats and Republicans have to be very cognizant about: What can we all do to take the temperature down?”
Witt focused on the