Radio personality Charlamagne Tha God forcefully rejected growing demands that critics soften their language toward President Donald Trump after a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner over the weekend.
The host of “The Breakfast Club” said Monday he is tired of the reflexive plea for restraint whenever political violence targets the president or his allies. “People always say, ‘So, are we going to tone down the violent rhetoric towards Trump?’” Charlamagne said. “Stop it! I’m sick of that narrative.”
He insisted the question should be directed squarely at Trump. “I need every single media personality to direct that energy and that question toward one person, and that is Donald J. Trump. At what point do people simply say, ‘Hey, Trump, it’s clear that you’re the drama.’”
Charlamagne pointed to Trump’s reaction to the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who led the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump said he was “glad” Mueller was dead. The radio host read Trump’s words aloud and then asked the president directly: “Do you realize there are people out there who feel the same way about you?”
“That’s why you don’t wish death on people,” Charlamagne continued. “Whatever God’s got planned for a person is between them and God. There’s no need to speak that kind of negativity over anybody’s life because you end up speaking it over yours.”
The shooting at the Washington Hilton on Saturday initially prompted a conciliatory tone from Trump. He called the event “dedicated to the freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press and in a certain way it did.” But that tone quickly shifted. On Sunday, Trump attacked CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell after she read from the shooter’s reported manifesto. Trump resumed his press attacks within hours, undercutting any brief truce.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday blamed political violence on “a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, by elected members of the Democrat party and even some in the media.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) fired back, defending his own remarks about redistricting that Republicans had condemned as encouraging violence. Jeffries called the GOP outrage “phony” and directed his criticism at Leavitt: “This so-called White House press secretary wants to lecture America, and lecture us, about civility? Get lost. Clean up your own house.”
Trump has a long record of making inflammatory comments about deceased political opponents. He claimed that actor/director Rob Reiner, who died in an apparent homicide along with his wife in December, was a victim of “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”
Republican lawmakers have also called for lowering the temperature. After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, then-Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) acknowledged the role of partisan rhetoric. “It’s all of our faults, right?” Mullin said in September. “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.”
