House Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., wounded by a gunman with a “political agenda” in June 2017, says the nation is divided, but that disagreements should never become personal or violent.
In remarks aired and posted Sunday on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” alongside his friend, Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., Scalise stressed that Republicans and Democrats can still find common ground.
“We're a divided nation right now,” Scalise said. “But, if you look back at the history of our country, I mean, our founders set up a system of government where, with the rights of free speech… you can go out and disagree with people and you can actually express those disagreements. In many countries you can’t.”
The difference, he said, “number one, you should never make those disagreements personal. But there's no excuse, it's completely unacceptable, to resort to violence to try to resolve some kind of disagreement when you have somebody with — that you have with them politically.”
Scalise also said areas of collaboration where he and Democrats like Richmond, who heads the Congressional Black Caucus, can work together include immigration.
“He and I'll be able to work on… a number of things,” Scalise said.
“Shouldn't we secure the border?” he asked. “I'm sure in our bill we're going to make sure we build the wall. And we also solve the [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] problem, but we fix some of the problems that stop us from securing the border.”
“A lot of the internal security measures — Secretary Nielsen of Homeland Security has identified so many different loopholes that make it hard to actually secure America's border. Let's fix those,” he said.
He also said community and police relations could be another area of bipartisan cooperation.
“That is an area where we can work together to try to improve a situation we both agree is bad," Scalise said. "And again, how you best do it, I think we're both trying to figure out that road because it is a real problem and it needs to be addressed."
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