During House floor remarks on Wednesday, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) spoke about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
00:05I want to join the gentleman from Texas in expressing my anger and disgust at the cowardly
00:11attack on the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, a couple of weekends ago.
00:16What happened at that rally was horrific and un-American.
00:20When the news first broke, my thoughts immediately turned to the former president's family
00:24and the uncertainty and fear they must have felt.
00:27Our families are often the ones who shoulder the burden of the decisions we make, and I
00:31know that must have been an awful day for them.
00:33I am truly grateful that the former president is okay.
00:36I am also heartbroken over the death of Corey Camperatore, a former fire chief who selflessly
00:43shielded his own family from the bullets.
00:46And of course, I will continue keeping the other two victims who were seriously wounded
00:50in my prayers.
00:52Sadly, political violence is not new to this country.
00:56One of my earliest memories is actually of us sitting around our dining room table with
01:01my mother and my father and my two sisters in Worcester, Massachusetts, writing condolence
01:06cards to Ethel Kennedy in the wake of Robert Kennedy's assassination.
01:11It was an awful, awful thing.
01:12I hope our country never goes through that ever again.
01:16We don't yet know the motive of the would-be assassin, and there are still many unanswered
01:20questions.
01:21We know he was a disturbed, isolated young man, happened to be a registered Republican
01:25who had easy access to an AR-15.
01:28He was doing computer searches on both Republicans and Democrats on the rally in Pennsylvania,
01:34as well as the Democratic National Convention.
01:37We also know that an assassination attempt is more than just an attack on one person.
01:41It is an attack on the fabric of our democracy.
01:44And so it needs to be taken very, very, very seriously.
01:49There needs to be accountability.
01:51And I just caution here that accountability does not mean finger-pointing.
01:56I actually want to echo the remarks of the former president's family to say that many
02:01brave law enforcement officers and Secret Service agents put their lives on the line
02:07in that rally.
02:08They nearly took a bullet for the former president and ought to be applauded for their bravery.
02:12I also think we shouldn't be jumping to conclusions about which law enforcement agency our officer
02:18is to blame.
02:19Whether it's this leader, or that leader, or this person, or that person.
02:22We don't need to play the blame game.
02:24We need to know the facts.
02:26We need to get the facts.
02:28Clearly, there were major breakdowns in communication and planning, which is why we need a task
02:33force to investigate every aspect of what happened.
02:37Let them examine what went wrong, and let us make sure this never, ever, ever happens
02:42again.
02:43And with that, I reserve my time.