Democratic strategist Donna Brazile clashed with former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus after he defended Eric Trump’s assertion that Democrats were to blame for assassination attempts on his father, former President Donald Trump.
During a panel discussion on ABC Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos asked Priebus if Eric Trump had been wrong to blame Democrats for assassination attempts on the former president’s life.
“The fact of the matter is, if Donald Trump’s head was one tiny twist the other direction, he would be dead right now,” Priebus opined. “So yeah, when your dad almost gets killed and when he gets shot again, look, I’m not suggesting the Democrats are doing it, but the rhetoric that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy was a Democrat talking point.”
“Look, I got to say something to you,” Brazile told Priebus moments later. “I come out of the civil rights movement. Nonviolence was our touchstone.”
“There’s no, no, and I mean this, there’s no place for violent rhetoric,” she continued. “And when you threaten election workers, when you threaten to execute your quote unquote former Joint Chief of Staff, Mr. Milley, when you mock Nancy Pelosi’s husband being beaten by a hammer, I don’t want to be lectured by Eric Trump.”
Brazile insisted that there was no place for violence.
“We need both political parties, both leaders,” she asserted. “Do not go out there and blame Haitians. Do not go out there and blame immigrants and migrants. That is the rhetoric we hear every day.”
“And if you cannot, you cannot say that Joe Biden won this election, Joe Biden won the election,” she said. “It’s a floodgate of lies.”
Priebus interrupted: “And the fact of the matter is this is a former president and a son that number one came extremely close to losing his life and losing his father, okay? He’s been called a threat to democracy from the very beginning.”
“So don’t sit here and act like holier than thou, that somehow you have a corner on this message because you don’t,” he added. “And that’s why you’re not winning. That’s why Harris is behind. And that’s why she’s going to lose.”
But Brazile insisted that people were not buying Priebus’ “lies.”
“Why can’t you say, why can’t you simply say that blaming Democrats for the associate… Just say it’s wrong,” she implored.
“I just said it, okay?” Priebus exclaimed. “But it’s also wrong to paint the president of the United States, President Trump, as the threat to democracy that’s going to end the United States of America.”
“What does that do to people’s heads when you do that?” he asked.
“The floodgate of lies must stop,” Brazile remarked.
