ABCNews.com(WASHINGTON) — Following a day of high tensions after multiple explosive devices were sent to former presidents Clinton and Obama, as well as a number of prominent Democrats and CNN’s offices in New York, President Trump told a crowd in Wisconsin that the country must come together in “peace and harmony,” and that politicians “must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.”
“Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy, itself,” Trump said, without taking the chance to identify the attempted bombings as ‘acts of terrorism.’ “No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, coercion, or control.”
But on a day when a major newsroom was forced to evacuate its office over a bomb threat, the president used the moment to call for the media to spend some time in self-reflection, while making no mention of whether his own rhetoric has contributed to the present political climate.
“The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories. Have to do it. They’ve got to stop,” Trump said.
And while the president has spent the past several months on the campaign trail attacking the motives, personalities and appearances of his political enemies while routinely identifying the press as the “enemy of the people,” he sought to coach candidates across the country to temper their tones 13 days out of the midterm elections.
“Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective,” Trump said. “Have to do that. The language of moral condemnation and destructive routine, these are arguments and disagreements that have to stop.”
Trump held the rally in the central Wisconsin town of Mosinee in support of Senate candidate Leah Vukmir and Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
The visit is President Trump’s first return to the state for a campaign rally since taking office, and is considered among one of the more Trump-friendly areas of Wisconsin where Republicans hope their get-out-the-vote efforts can help to fend off any “blue wave.”
For his part, Trump is currently in the midst of an aggressive campaign swing on behalf of the GOP, which has included 16 rallies just in the months of September and October, and said he plans for at least 10 more before election day.
Former President Barack Obama is scheduled to appear in Milwaukee just two days after Trump’s visit, where he’ll stump in support of Vukmir’s opponent Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Walker’s opponent Tony Evers, in addition to other down-ticket Democrats in the state.
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