ABC/Ida Mae Astute(WASHINGTON) — Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, on Friday praised President Trump as “healer in chief” of the nation in the wake of Wednesday’s attack on a GOP congressional baseball practice.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and five others were injured Wednesday as Republicans practiced at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, for an annual congressional charity game that went on as scheduled Thursday night.
“There was a feeling of unity and healing,” Conway said of Thursday’s baseball game in an interview on Fox and Friends. “I think that was brought about by our leader, President Donald Trump.”
Conway added, however, “You have people reverting to their hateful rhetoric already again just yesterday. I think the unity lasted for a hot minute for some leaders.”
She singled out House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who initially prayed for the injured attack victims but “was pointing fingers again” Thursday, according to Conway.
Conway also attributed the attack to the influence of social media’s promotion of harmful rhetoric.
“Look at Twitter, if I were shot and killed tomorrow, half of Twitter would explode in applause and excitement. This is the world we live in right now,” Conway said.
She continued, “You can’t attack people personally in a way and think that tragedies like this won’t happen.”
Conway also pointed out images of violence against Trump: Snoop Dogg’s music video that featured the president’s being shot, New York City’s Shakespeare in the Park’s suggested assassination of Trump and comedian Kathy Griffin’s photo posing with his severed head.
Conway stressed that there’s no one to blame but the shooter, though adding “there should be some introspection there.”
Her comments come a day after a series of inflammatory tweets from Trump regarding the Russia investigation, which he said was “led by some very bad and conflicted people.”
A day after the shooting, Trump’s first tweet of the morning was another hit against ongoing investigations into his campaign’s potential collusion with Russia.
They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017
He followed by questioning why “Crooked H” is not being investigated while his “non-dealings” are.
The president early Friday morning continued to express discontent with the investigation over Twitter. While Trump claims the investigations have been going on for seven months, former FBI director Jim Comey testified the probe into possible connections between Trump campaign associates and Russia began 11 months ago, in July 2016.
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