Republican Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise submitted an FBI report detailing the motives of the man who shot him and other Republicans into the congressional record at a Feb. 24 House hearing on violent disinformation.
“I want to take you back to June 14, 2017, the day that a gunman walked onto a baseball field and shot at over a dozen members of Congress, including myself… The gunman was motivated by hyper-charged rhetoric that he was hearing from the left,” Scalise said.
Scalise’s testimony begins about 19 minutes into the Energy and Commerce Committee’s hearing Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.
Scalise then moved to introduce into the congressional record an FBI report that analyzed the motivations of the baseball shooter James Hodgkinson and included some of his writings.
Hodgkinson, a 2016 Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer, was also an avid Rachel Maddow and MSNBC fan. Despite the obsession with the network and one of its pundits, Scalise said he does not blame “those other people.”
“I blame the shooter,” Scalise said. “The shooter is the one who should be held accountable, and I’ve been very clear about that. But it’s an example that we all need to be aware of our rhetoric, and can all be doing a better job of turning down the rhetoric.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Assassination List Found On James Hodgkinson’s Body)
House Democrats organized the hearing on misinformation in order to “examine the role of traditional media platforms—broadcasters and cable networks—in disseminating disinformation and extremist content to the American public” in the aftermath of the Capitol riot and the coronavirus pandemic.
Ahead of the hearing, Democratic California Reps. Anna Eshoo and Gerry McNerney sent a letter to 12 television broadcasters questioning why they offer Fox News, Newsmax and One America News to consumers. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr slammed the letter, calling it a “chilling transgression.”