Top Republican Kevin McCarthy is now harshly criticizing what was apparently supposed to be a joke: The minority leader in the US House of Representatives pondered beating his Democratic opponent Nancy Pelosi with a hammer.
Republican leader in the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, faces calls for resignation after joking about hitting the House Democratic President, Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer.
At a donation dinner in the US state of Tennessee on Saturday, McCarthy was confident that he would be able to win a majority in the House of Representatives again in the midterm elections next year. At the event, he was presented with an oversized version of the hammer, the hallmark of the President of the House of Representatives.
McCarthy then joked, according to journalists present, that if the current majority leader Pelosi had to hand him the hammer after the elections, it would take a lot of effort not to beat her with it. “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me the hammer. It’s going to be tough not to hit her with that,” McCarthy said, as heard in an audio recording broadcast by the local media.
“Violence against women is not a joke”
California Democratic MPs Ted Lieu and Eric Swalwell called on McCarthy on Sunday to apologize to Pelosi or to resign. “Violence against women is not a joke,” wrote the Democratic MP Teresa Leger Fernández from New Mexico in the short message service Twitter.
“Statements like these led to violence and death in the US Capitol,” tweeted Michigan MP Debbie Dingell.
The storming of the Capitol on January 6th is considered a black day in the history of US democracy. Radical supporters of then President Donald Trump had attacked the seat of Congress when the election victory of Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential election on November 3 was to be certified there. Five people were killed in the violence, including a police officer.
Trump had previously repeated his completely unsubstantiated accusation of massive election fraud during a performance in front of supporters in Washington and urged his audience to march to the Capitol and “fight the hell out of it”.
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