Republicans condemn Kamala Harris for calling Trump a fascist. Trump called Harris a fascist last week.

Top Republicans condemned Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday for calling Donald Trump a “fascist” — even though Trump recently used the same word to describe Harris.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a joint statement that using the F-word against Trump could inspire another assassination attempt on the former president.

“Labeling a political opponent a ‘fascist’ risks inviting another would-be assassin to try to rob voters of their choice before Election Day,” Johnson and McConnell said.

In their statement, Johnson and McConnell chose to ignore Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, such as his frequent claims that Harris is destroying the country, that his political opponents are a domestic enemy of the United States, and that recent immigrants have “bad genes” and are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Just last week, Trump even called Harris a fascist. And he used the word repeatedly to describe his political opponents in general.

“Kamala destroyed our border. She destroyed our economy,” Trump said last week at an Oct. 18 rally in Detroit, Michigan, before claiming Harris helped create the “defund the police” movement.

“Anyone who wants to defund the police even for a day, we don’t want them, we don’t want them. He doesn’t deserve to be the president of the United States,” Trump said. “If you have this ideology – and she has it, it’s Marxist, communist, fascist, whatever you want.”

Two days earlier, Trump called his political opponents “the enemy within.” a Fox News interview.

“They are very dangerous. They are Marxists, communists and fascists and they are sick,” he said.

Trump also referred to his opponents as fascists at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on October 15.

“We will put our country first. We will put the Communists, the Marxists and the Fascists last and they will always remain last,” he said.

This week Harris she said “yes” when asked if she agreed with Trump’s former chief of staff that Trump meets the dictionary definition of a fascist.

“It is a far-right, ultra-nationalist ideology and political movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” said John Kelly, a former Marine general which served as Trump’s White House. chief of staff more than anyone else, he told The New York Times this week.

“So certainly, in my experience, these are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of leading America,” Kelly said.

Another retired general, Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core.”

Harris showed Trump suggesting “termination of the Constitution” in 2022 and his description of political opponents as domestic enemies.

“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power,” she said this week.

After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to President Joe Biden, he incited a mob attack on the US Capitol as lawmakers certified the election result. Dozens of police were injured and more than 1,500 people were charged with crimes over the attack.

But Republicans have argued that some Democratic criticism of Trump could incite violence after a gunman scratched Trump’s ear in an assassination attempt in July. President Johnson suggested, without evidence, that Biden’s description of Trump as “threat to democracy” led to the attack; the shooter was killed immediately, and investigators have not discovered a political motive.

Johnson and McConnell argued Friday that a note left by a second alleged assassin, who was caught lurking on Trump’s golf course with an assault rifle, suggested he was inspired by Democratic rhetoric.

“The man who was caught lying in wait in a Florida ambush left others with a chilling call to arms: ‘Now it’s up to you to finish the job,'” they wrote. “Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust him with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, they must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions.”