CBS Anchor Suggests Republicans Might Need to ‘Reflect’ After Charlie Kirk Assassination
CBS anchor Nate Burleson asked Kevin McCarthy whether his party “reflect on political violence” and rhetoric following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah.
On Thursday’s CBS Mornings, Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican Speaker of the House, joined the table to react to Kirk being shot and killed the day prior.
Burleson asked McCarthy at one point whether his party should be reflecting on “political violence,” something McCarthy and co-anchor Gayle King both pushed back on.
Burleson asked:
As Tony mentioned, not everyone took to his words or his rhetoric. You know, at times, they were offensive to specific communities. But with that said, this is not the time to focus on that. We are focused on this tragedy. Speaking of this tragedy, is this a moment for your party to reflect on political violence? Is it a moment for us to think about the responsibility of our political leaders and their voices and what it does to the masses as they get lost in misinformation or disinformation that turns in and spills into political violence.
“I say both parties,” King quickly added to her colleague’s question.
McCarthy expanded things out even further and argued it is the “nation” as a whole that needs to reflect on the divisive and sometimes violent state of politics today.
“I don’t even say parties, I say a nation. If there’s a moment in time you want to look to, and I looked back and I watched this again when Robert F. Kennedy is running, he’s in Indianapolis, and he just got the news that Martin Luther King was killed. And he has to tell the crowd because we don’t have social media at that time. And it was remarkable the words he said. He said, we have to ask as a nation, who are we? And how do we want to move forward?” McCarthy said.
The former Republican leader added that Kirk was not “elected” and was promoting open dialogue.
“We have watched this political attack on both sides. We watched what happened in Minnesota. We watched what happened to President Trump,” he said. “We’ve watched this on both sides. This is not a question about parties. This is a question of about nations. We cannot normalize this.”
Watch above via CBS.
