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Congressman Mike Kelly, who attended the deadly Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, called on Americans to “wake up” and stop acting “like a third-world country.”
“Physically, I’m fine. Mentally, I’m fine. But … This has got to stop. This has absolutely got to stop,” Kelly, who represents Butler County, toldThe Hill on Sunday.
Trump was grazed by a bullet just minutes into his evening rally, sending shockwaves through the nation at a time of deep division in American politics. The shooter, identified by federal authorities as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, killed one person in the crowd, while two others were critically injured, before he was “neutralized” by Secret Service agents.
Kelly said neither he nor his wife, grandchildren, and other relatives who went to the rally were harmed.
It’s high-time for a “deep dive into what happened to America,” the Pennsylvania Republican continued. “This is certainly not the America that I grew up in, and that my parents had gone through the Great Depression, World War II to make sure we had a future. But that’s what we are right now, as we are right now, like a third-world country.”
“It’s not the United States of America anymore. It’s the divided states of America — and too radical,” he added.
Kelly insisted that all Americans — regardless of their political views — need to take a hard look at their increasingly divisive rhetoric.
“The reality of it all is you have to be responsible for what it is you say, and I think we need to start taking personal responsibility for that,” Kelly said. “It’s not any one party, it’s not any one group of people.”
Unlike other members of his party, some of whom jumped to blame President Joe Biden in the immediate aftermath of the violence, Kelly said it was “too early to start pointing fingers.”
At his press conference on Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden similarly warned: “Don’t make assumptions about [the shooter’s] motives and affiliations.”
The assassination attempt came two days before Trump was scheduled to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he is expected to be named the GOP nominee for president.
Meanwhile, former Secret Service agents are questioning the current agency’s handling of the shooting. The House Oversight Committee chair announced that his panel was launching a probe into the incident.
The motive for the massacre as well as how a rifle-toting man was able to get within such close proximity to a former president is being investigated by authorities. The shooting is being investigated as an attempted assassination and act of domestic terror, the FBI said on Sunday.
“The question is, ‘Why did this young man decide that on that day he had to kill a candidate for the presidency?’” Kelly said “I don’t know that the Secret Service could have done anything about any type of law enforcement to do that. That starts in the hearts and minds of men and women.”
“It’s time for the whole country — the whole country — to wake up,” Kelly told The Hill. “This has gotten to the point that that’s just no longer tolerable.”
