Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked Vice President Kamala Harris in a rare joint statement to tone down her rhetoric in the lead-up to Election Day, days after Harris said she considered Donald Trump a fascist.
The two top Republicans accused Harris of fanning “the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus” and said her words in recent days “seem to dare it to boil over.”
“She must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” Johnson and McConnell said in their statement. “We call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats.”
Their statement does not mention Trump’s recent rhetoric, in which he’s referred to Harris as a “fascist,” “marxist,” “communist” and “comrade.” The former president has also railed against “enemies within” and called for using government resources to prosecute domestic political opponents — such as California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Johnson downplayed Trump’s comments on Sunday shows, insisting he was not talking about specific politicians and adding he “did not hear President Trump say he’s going to sic the military on Adam Schiff.”
Meanwhile, recently published excerpts of a biography of McConnell says that he bashed Trump as “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” and a “despicable human being” in private following the events of Jan. 6. McConnell has since embraced Trump as the GOP nominee after the two had an icy relationship for years.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At a CNN town hall this week, Harris was asked if she considered Trump a fascist and responded: “Yes, I do.” That comment came after Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, told The New York Times that the former president met the definition of a fascist.
Harris also slammed Trump in remarks this week for, according to Kelly, reportedly saying in private that Adolf “Hitler did some good things.”
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she said.
The vice president has made Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his role in stoking the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol a key focus of her campaign message in the final weeks. She’s due to deliver her “closing argument” for the election during Tuesday remarks at the Ellipse, the location where Trump called on his supporters to march on Congress ahead of the violent attempted insurrection.
