Rick Scott’s Stunning Response to Pelosi Attack By MAGA Believer: Make People More ‘Comfortable’ With Election Results

Florida Senator and NRSC Chairman Rick Scott had a stunning suggestion when CNN anchor Dana Bash asked if leaders should push back on the rhetoric that appears to have incited the attack on Nancy and Paul Pelosi.

A suspect named David DePape allegedly broke into Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco home early Friday morning and violently attacked her husband Paul while asking for the speaker’s whereabouts. He has since been found to hold a raft of MAGA beliefs and grievances promoted by Trump and his supporters.

The assault sparked blistering denunciations of former President Donald Trump and his political acolytes who have stoked the grievances that fueled the alleged suspect from Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden — who made a point of noting that the assailant used the same chant that bloodthirsty Jan. 6 rioters used: “Where is Nancy?”

And at a polling place on Saturday, the president challenged Republicans, saying “It’s one thing to condemn the violence. But you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who are arguing that the election is not real,” and adding “The talk has to stop. That’s the problem. That’s the problem… condemn what produces the violence.”

On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Bash asked Scott if Biden is right about pushing back on the Big Lie, but Scott’s suggestion was essentially to comfort potential future suspects by making them “comfortable” with election results that — as Bash pointed out repeatedly — are already free and fair:

DANA BASH: Is he right? Should Republicans do more to reject conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric?

SEN. RICK SCOTT: I think what we have to do is, one, we have to condemn the violence, and then we have to do everything we can to get people. Make sure people feel comfortable about these elections. You know, we’ve got to, we’ve got to do everything we can to get people comfortable that this election in nine days is going to be free and fair, that people’s votes are all going to be counted fairly. They’re not going to be diluted. And so that’s one thing I’ve tried to do at the NRSC is get people to make sure we’re ready. I tell people, go to the, go to the polls, vote. Go to the polls and be poll watchers. So you can see that these elections are going to be free, fair. And we’ve got to work on it every every cycle. Get it better. Every every, every cycle.

DANA BASH: To be fair, Senator, most of your Republican colleagues, even those in the Trump White House, said that the 2020 election was free and fair, and that has not stopped the conspiracies from flying. So is it important for people from the top of your party, the former president, on down, to tone down the rhetoric about the conspiracies that might instigate somebody who is unhinged, like the man who went into the Pelosi home.

SEN. RICK SCOTT: Dana I think what’s important is everybody do everything we can to make these elections fair. We’ve got Hillary Clinton saying the 24 election is going to be stolen. We’ve got Stacey Abrams saying she didn’t she didn’t lose. You know, so my job is do everything I can to get people to feel comfortable. These elections are fair. And I’m telling people, get out to vote. Go be a poll watcher. And when we have the opportunity, let’s make our election laws safer. Let’s make sure that you have voter I.D., you don’t have ballot harvesting. You have monitor ballot box that makes people feel more comfortable that the elections are going to be fair.

DANA BASH: And just to be clear, I want to move on, but there is no evidence that they weren’t fair in 2020.

To Bash’s mild credit, she did point out that people like this suspect have no reason to believe the bullshit that Trump and his many followers are selling, but she seems to have missed the outrageous and unmistakable message of Scott’s response: an assault on Paul Pelosi and a likely assassination attempt on the speaker of the House should prompt us to coddle the people Trump incited, rather than push back on the incitement.

But there’s a more insidious dimension beyond the obvious, which is that Scott is using this assault to try and extort even more voter suppression laws out of the situation.

Watch above via CNN’s State of the Union.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.