Politics

Steve Scalise Challenges Ocasio-Cortez To ‘Own Up’ And Condemn Her Supporters’ Calls For Violence Against Him

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Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana challenged Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to condemn violent threats being made against him by two of her supporters on Twitter.

Scalise was debating tax policy with Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday when two of her supporters chimed in to say, “snipe his ass” and “kick his cane.”

Hi @AOC. Happy to continue this debate on the Floor of the People’s House, but it’s clearly not productive to engage here with some of your radical followers. #StayClassy pic.twitter.com/lZCO3oiLUZ

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) January 6, 2019

“Clearly, she ought to own up and just say, look this isn’t something that I condone,” Scalise said on “Hannity” Monday. “She doesn’t, like you said, own this herself directly but she shouldn’t condone it either. And you shouldn’t look the other way. We shouldn’t tolerate either side — Our friends or our enemies in a political debate to encourage or incite violence against another person.”

“I was having a good debate and whether or not they should confiscate 70 percent of people’s taxes and a marginal tax rate that I think is ridiculous,” he continued. “I thought it was an important debate to go back and forth on and then you saw some of that stuff and I said look, I’m not going to engage in that kind of violence.”

Scalise said he appreciates the spirit of the First Amendment but cannot support any statements that might incite political violence.

“To me, there are lines. There’s a First Amendment and I fully respect that but the First Amendment doesn’t allow you to say ‘fire’ in a movie theater,” he said.

“There are limits. And when you incite violence against someone else, that’s not the way we act in this country. And so if you want to debate the merits, then go ahead. That’s what’s great about this country. Frankly if you’re losing the debate, that’s when you usually have to resort to name-calling and that’s why so many on the left want to call names to Donald Trump [sic] as opposed to try to argue whether or not we should have a secure border.”

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