(CNSNews.com) - Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said it's "unfair" for the Washington Post to blame "Republicans' increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric" for the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.
In an op-ed published Saturday, the Post said: "For many Democrats, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband represents the all-but-inevitable conclusion of Republicans’ increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric toward their political opponents — a phenomenon that escalated under former president Donald Trump."
"Well, I think that's unfair," McDaniel told "Fox News Sunday."
"I think this is a deranged individual. You can't say people saying, 'let's fire Pelosi' or 'let's take back the House' is saying go do violence. It's just unfair.
"And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board. Lee Zeldin was attacked. We had an assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh.
"And Democrats didn't repute -- you know, didn't repudiate that. Joe Biden didn't talk about the assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh.
"But I think the only thing to remember is, if this weren't Paul Pelosi, this criminal would probably be out on the street tomorrow. We saw Lee Zeldin's attacker was on the street right after he attacked him. This is what Democratic policies are bringing.
"But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery. We don't like this at all, across the board. We don't want to see attacks on any politician from any political background."
'Years of Republican propaganda'
MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, her voice quivering with rage, took her cue from the Washington Post on Monday, saying that “years of Republican propaganda and Trump-fueled fascism led 42-year-old David DePape to break into Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home, with the intent to harm her."
"There is no mischaracterizing what happened," Brzezinski said: "Are we to insist this attack was not the direct result of the dangerous, violent rhetoric we have heard from Donald Trump's Republican party over the last six years? The deranged man who violently assaulted Paul Pelosi got his idea from somewhere...
“…When left unchecked, Trump led an increasingly desensitized nation through shocking moment after shocking moment, all the way through this, the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
"Yeah, there are many weak, deranged minds in this country, like the man who attacked Paul Pelosi, but Republicans have been hiding behind that word deranged as if it was some isolated incident, and you should only look at that. Don't look at anything else, even if it's screaming out at you.
“And yet you can see where DePape's idea came from, in his blog posts, in his words, 'where is Nancy,' in his plans. He brought zip ties with him. Deranged people can fall prey to a cult leader like Donald Trump. And they have."