Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) on Thursday made a joint appearance on CNN with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) to denounce America’s political divide in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death — and called on both sides to “bring that temperature down.”
“Inside Politics” host Dana Bash began by chronicling the many incidents of political violence over the past few years, citing the killing of Rep. Melissa Hortman (D-Minn.) and assassination plots against President Donald Trump to argue the issue appears bipartisan.
“It’s all of our faults, right?” Mullin said. “I mean, we stir up the base. If you stir up the base, what do you expect is going to happen? If you stir a fire, coals are going to come out of it. If you pour gasoline on a fire, it’s going to explode. And sometimes we gaslight the base.”
Kirk was fatally shot Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University. Conservative voices, such as Fox News host Jesse Watters and the president himself, have respectively blamed “the media” and “radical left” for the right-wing activist’s on-campus killing.
While he initially agreed that such violence is incited by people on “all” sides, Mullin — who recently claimed Fox News isn’t biased — argued Democrats shoulder more of the blame.
He said, “I am pointing fingers here because this happened to Republicans a lot lately, but it seems like Democrats are gaslighting this a lot more. And it goes from calling the president a dictator, from saying that we are Nazis, that it’s been an attack on Christian values.”
The Oklahoma Republican further appeared to argue that the college campus protests across the country last year against Israel’s war on Gaza showed that “religious debate is not even considered a conversation anymore,” before returning to his apparent plea.
“And so, we all play a role in trying to bring that temperature down,” Mullin said.
Gottheimer agreed that “both sides are guilty” of inflaming political violence but argued that one doesn’t have to look much further than the president himself. The congressman thus joined several Democrats in denouncing Trump for his divisive political rhetoric.
“I mean, [he] calls Democrats ‘vermin’ or ‘the enemy from within,’ you know the rhetoric,” Gottheimer said. “And the worst thing that could happen, to me, right now, is the president or any of our leaders coming out and saying, ‘It’s their fault,’ and going after the other side.”
“What we need to do is take the temperature down and say none of this,” he continued.
Trump said Wednesday in an Oval Office address that “the radical left” is “directly responsible” for the political violence. Asked Friday on “Fox and Friends” how the country can come back together, the president admitted on the air, “I couldn’t care less.”