Kudos to Melissa Francis for standing up to Newt Gingrich, who once again blamed liberals for a tragic shooting. This is a regular thing for him. Today it was:
Newt: Very sobering. First of all, we should be very grateful that nobody on the congressional side was killed. Nobody working for Congress was killed. I think our prayers ought to go out for Steve Scalise and his family and the people who were wounded. I don't think any of us expected today for this turn to come. You had an increasing intensity of hostility on the Left. I talk to college students regularly who say to me, if they openly are for Trump, they get threatened. Some of them get death threats, we have the intensity on the Left that is very real, whether it is somebody holding up the president's head and blood or whether play that shows the president being assassinated or is democratic leaning national politicians who are so angry they have to use vulgarity because they can't find in a common language. This intensity has been building since election night.
Melissa: With respect, everything you're saying is true, but to talk about it in the terms of Left and Right right now in the wake of it, does that make sense? Does it make it worse? Do you rise above it and say we all need to stay calm and focus on the work ahead of us?
Newt: you had a series of things that tell people that it's okay to hate Trump, it's okay to consider assassinating Trump and then suddenly we are supposed to rise above it. Until the next time?
Sandra: on the other side, they'll say the Right's at fault for inciting this. I'm only saying what the other side is saying. They will say that Trump's language on the trail, that the president -- I'm not agreeing with us at all, I'm only bringing it to the couch.
Gillian: I think this is a wake-up call for Washington, for the governing class in the United States. I think that the message here for the rest of the country is that it's time to really lead by example and that starts with Congress, it starts with the executive branch and it starts with the judicial branch. It's incumbent upon the governing class in Washington to do their best to if not end the gridlock, then to at least end that hellacious rhetoric that has done nothing but divide our nation over the last election cycle. Today is a poignant tragedy coming on the heels of what has been the most heated political season we've seen in many years. It puts a fine point on the problem at hand and I think it really is a wake-up call for bipartisanship. Anyone who is not calling for that today is doing Americans a disservice.
It's surprising to see Outnumbered take this position, I just wish they would admit that Fox News is a huge part of the problem. The rhetoric coming from Fox against liberals -- hey they have Newt Gingrich on speed dial! -- is as bad as anywhere else in media.
And shame on them for not noticing, as no one who invites Newt Gingrich on their show, that he has a long history of doing this kind of thing. Taking a shooting or other tragic loss of life and making it the fault of Democrats. For decades he has done this:
Gingrich Rules are that you never mention this craven BS and that you let him blame liberals every single time. And Outnumbered's pouty platitudes about bipartisanship do not change that.
