CrimePolitics

Rasmussen: Majority says politics to blame for attack on Scalise

While a majority of Americans think Wednesday’s shooting attack on Rep. Steve Scalise was fueled by politics, a Rasmussen survey says Donald Trump now enjoys 50 percent job approval, the highest it has been in weeks. (Dave Workman)

A new Rasmussen survey released Friday says a majority of American adults believe politics is to blame for the attack on Congressman Steve Scalise and several others at a Virginia baseball field Wednesday.

Scalise, the House Majority Whip, remains in critical condition in the hospital. He was seriously wounded in the shooting attack launched by a radicalized liberal identified as James Hodgkinson. Capitol Police officers acting as Scalise’s security detail returned fire and fatally wounded Hodgkinson.

Rasmussen reported that 55 percent of American adults “believe the shooting incident was the result of political anger in this country.” Only 28 percent think the attack was random. That may be due to witness statements that prior to the shooting, Hodgkinson asked some people who were leaving the practice field in Alexandria whether Republicans or Democrats were on the field.

Hodgkinson is known to have held extremist anti-Republican beliefs, and he was a vocal critic of President Donald Trump.

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Coincidentally, the daily Rasmussen presidential poll shows that 50 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while the other 50 percent do not approve. Trump’s approval rating has varied from a high of 59 percent in late January to a low of 42 percent in early April, Rasmussen noted.

After the shooting, Alan M. Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, condemned what he called ‘Democratic hate speech” against Trump since he defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton last November. There has been a fury on Capitol Hill since Trump took office, as Democrats have pursued one alleged scandal after another.

“When liberal leftists support the assassination of President Trump on stage what do you expect to happen? Hate speech and actions incite this kind of violence. It is time for Democrats like Reps. Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton and many of the talking heads at CNN and MSNBC to shut up.”—Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF founder

For weeks there was talk about investigating the Trump campaign for alleged Russian interference with the election. Then there was trouble over the president’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, whom several Democrats had wanted dismissed over Comey’s disclosures about the FBI investigation of Clinton’s email server.

Now special prosecutor Robert Mueller reportedly is considering investigating the president for obstruction of justice.

As Gottlieb noted in a statement to the press Wednesday about the attack on Scalise, “This hate speech has been going on since Donald Trump was elected. It gets their voter base agitated and this is what happens as a result.”

The past six months have seen unprecedented protests bordering on anarchy. Members of Congress, particularly Rep. Maxine Waters, have been very vocal in their dislike of the president. Liberal media commentators, especially on CNN and MSNBC, have also been heaping a steady stream of criticism on Trump and his administration.

A play shows the assassination of a Trump lookalike based on the killing of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate. Comedian Kathy Giffords appeared in a photograph holding a facsimile of Trump’s bloody head, but was roundly condemned for it.

The Scalise attack appeared to bring some semblance of cordiality to Capitol Hill, but appearances may be deceiving. The Rasmussen poll also revealed that 49 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents “are much less likely than Republicans (68%) to attribute the attack to political anger.”

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