U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) spoke to Fox & Friends Wednesday about her Democratic counterpart Steve Cohen’s violent remarks about wishing she would jump off a bridge.
The interview is available here.
Ainsley Earhardt played the Huffington Post’s audio of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) saying he wished President Donald Trump would tell Blackburn, a U.S. Senate candidate, to jump off the Harahan Bridge in Memphis.
The Tennessee Star reported that Cohen made the remarks last month at a prayer breakfast at Broadway Baptist Church in Memphis that was hosted by Democrat Phil Bredesen’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Cohen said, “The big orange president. He’s going to come down here and he is going to endorse Marsha Blackburn. Because Marsha Blackburn, if he says, ‘jump off the Harahan Bridge,’ she’ll jump off the Harahan Bridge. I wish he’d say that.”
Blackburn told Earhardt, “I thought surely he really didn’t say this and surely there was not laughter. You’d expect that with Phil Bredesen, my opponent, in the audience, he would have said, ‘We don’t say things like that. We don’t wish someone’s demise or death.’
“But Ainsley, I’ll tell you, I believe in what Matthew 5 commands us — that we pray for our enemies and that is something I do everyday. Just like I pray for our nation’s leaders — I pray for our president, I pray for my colleagues, I prayed for President Obama — that is what we, as Christians, are commanded to do, so I do it. But, I will tell you, I do think that Phil Bredesen, he didn’t call out Steve Cohen, he didn’t call out Mark Brown — another of their spokesmen who called Trump supporters in Tennessee idiots and morons and said they weren’t worth the time and weren’t listening, and that is completely inappropriate.”
Blackburn also shared her thoughts about the matter on Aug. 10 with Ed Henry of Fox News.
The Democrats have doubled down their violent rhetoric against Blackburn, The Tennessee Star reported Tuesday.
Democratic consultant John Rowley told Fox 17 Nashville In Focus on Sunday that Cohen’s remark was “totally inbounds” because “Steve Cohen knows Marsha Blackburn can swim.” You can watch the clip here. Rowley said the incitement to violence was “nothing.”
