House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is calling on elected officials, the media, and late-night hosts, specifically, to change their messaging in the wake of Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Scalise, who himself was critically wounded by a gunman in a politically motivated attack in 2017, posted several messages to social media in the hours following the shooting, including one in which he blamed Democratic leaders for “fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America.”
The Louisiana Republican elaborated in an interview with CBS News on Sunday. “We don’t need to demonize someone else to make our point,” he said.
Asked by CBS’s John Dickerson to describe “in concrete terms” what he’d like to see change, Scalise said he hoped there would be a “dialing down” of personal attacks, not just among elected officials, but with the media as well—including late-night hosts.
“I mean, when you turn on a late-night show and it’s no longer comedy, it’s a constant 10-minute barrage against a single person,” he said. “Comparisons with Hitler. That kind of stuff. That needs to stop, too. I think everybody’s gotta look in the mirror and say can we kind of refocus what we like or don’t like about politics and not focus it all on an individual.”
It remains to be seen how the late-night shows will address this weekend’s attempt on Trump’s life. The Daily Show, the only late-night show besides Gutfeld! that had planned to broadcast from the Republican National Convention this week, announced on Sunday that it had canceled its Monday episode, and will broadcast from its New York City studio Tuesday through Thurs of this week due to “the evolving situation in Milwaukee.”
Stephen Colbert’s Late Show had previously announced plans to broadcast live episodes from The Ed Sullivan Theatre this week. As of this writing, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Anthony Anderson (filling in for a vacationing Jimmy Kimmel on ABC) are all scheduled to air new episodes Monday night.