MSNBC anchor Alex Witt raised the issue of whether former President Donald Trump ought to contemplate moderating his rhetoric on Sunday, in light of what could have been an assassination attempt against him.
Secret Service personnel evacuated Trump from the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, after agents reportedly discharged their weapons at an individual armed with a semi-automatic rifle who approached within 500 yards of the former president while he was golfing. Witt, along with MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan, deliberated on whether Trump might encourage his supporters to “lower the temperature.”
“We have seen, Alex, just the cycle of political extremism at play, unfortunately, over the last, you know, really, decade of American politics. Polling, the Lincoln Democracy Institute did a great poll on political extremism last year and one of the findings was that over 50% of Americans no longer see the political opposition as trustworthy opponents, they see them as untrustworthy enemies,” Jordan told Witt hours before law enforcement confirmed that Trump was the target of an assassination attempt. “And so, on the scales of radicalization by what, you know, after 9/11, the scales that were used to gauge radicalism and extremism in the Middle East, by that criteria, almost 13% of Americans are actually political extremists that are radicalized and it’s very scary.”
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