Lawmakers are condemning the increase of political violence and vitriol across the country following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college in Utah on Wednesday.
Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat representing Massachusetts 6th congressional district, says his office received an extraordinary number of “violent and graphic” threats on Thursday and Friday from right-wing individuals online and over the phone that were directed toward him, his family and his staff after he pointed out that President Donald Trump should join House Speaker Mike Johnson and “other level-headed Republicans” in condemning political violence, rather than inciting it further.
“The solution to political disagreement in America is never violence. It should be easy for everybody to say that,” Moulton wrote on X. “Republicans need to condemn violence committed by the right, just as I and many other Democrats condemn violence by the left.”
Moulton joined NBC10 Boston for a virtual interview on Saturday in which he said “this horrific violence has to end.”
“We’re in a country that values freedom of speech that advances our democracy by being willing to disagree without resorting to violence. We can’t take a turn down that path. That requires everybody to turn down the rhetoric. It requires political leaders on both sides of the aisle, not just democrats,” Moulton said. “We’ve heard a lot of democrats say turn down the rhetoric at the same time as several republicans have unfortunately tried to turn it up to incite violence. We all need to come together and turn it down. That’s the only way forward.”
Moulton went on to say he hopes there will be an opportunity for bipartisan conversations, not just about gun violence, but noted there are two things that have to happen.
“One is we need to just start talking but the other is that we actually have to seriously address the root causes of this problem and one of the issues that we ought to be able to seriously seriously address is gun violence in America,” he explained. “Unfortunately there are a lot of people who are just saying that more guns is the solution and the facts tell a very different story. That we need to get weapons of war off of our streets, out of our schools, out of political events period. That’s the way to keep us safe, not by giving more assault rifles to people as some people would like to do.”
Amid the search for Charlie Kirk’s killer, college students in the Boston area say the shooting has left them scared to share their political beliefs.
When asked about his greatest fear, Moulton shared what he fears most on a personal level, and what he worries about most for our country.
“On a very personal level, I’ve got two little kids, and when you see those posts or if you go online and listen to the voicemails that I received not just threatening me but threatening my little girls, that’s literally my greatest fear,” he shared.
“My greatest fear for America is that we just descend into more chaos. That this becomes a tit for tat and unfortunately that’s what you’ve heard some republicans say. This is war, we’re gonna get you back, that kind of retribution talk. And this before they even understand you know what motivated this horrific killing,” he continued. “You know it turns out it’s a young man from a conservative Republican family in Utah in a Mormon neighborhood. And yet Nancy Mace, a colleague across the aisle, just immediately blamed transgender democrats, that doesn’t help. We need to come together. We need to turn down the rhetoric. We need to recognize that we ought to be able to disagree peacefully, that that’s fundamental to our democracy if we’re gonna move forward.”
Rep. Stephen Lynch echoed a similar message this week in a sit-down interview with NBC10 Boston political reporter Matt Prichard, saying that the dissemination of “vitriol and cruelty” makes this era different from the 1960s and its political killings.
Kaitlin McKinley Becker
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