Saturday on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) attacked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican nominee for the new House Speaker, for not denouncing members of Congress who, claims the inarticulate host Al Sharpton, made “threatening and all kind of vile and, really, dangerous accusations against other members of Congress.”
“[McCarthy] was trying to defend them in a public manner,” Jackson Lee said. “He alleges that he spoke to them quietly in private. But that did nothing to the potential threat. And let me just say this, Reverend Sharpton — it is very well-documented that words nowadays can actually break your bones. Words have generated violence. We have seen that since the former president of the United States generated his first remark, ‘Beat him up. I will pay for your lawyers.’ And violence has been generated by words, and so for Leader McCarthy at that time not to denounce these actions in a most vigorous way was also sad and shameful at the same time.”
Words can generate violence, but words are not violence. Words cannot “actually break your bones.” The members of Congress in question made no “threatening” or “dangerous” accusations, but the Left’s constant drumbeat is that right-wing rhetoric literally is fascistic violence.
Meanwhile, hypocrites like Sheila Jackson Lee have never once denounced the threatening, dangerous rhetoric and actual political violence of the Left, like Black Lives Matter rioting or Antifa thuggery.