Wisconsin’s two US senators came together from across the aisle to call for an end to bipartisan bickering in the wake of the Waukesha Christmas parade attack.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D) and Ron Johnson (R) issued a rare joint statement Saturday calling on outside groups and individuals to “cease and desist” using the SUV ambush that killed six people and injured more than five dozen “for their own political purposes.”
The statement didn’t call out any specific outside groups or individuals.
Local officials’ “top priority is to begin the healing process within Waukesha by providing comfort and support to surviving family members of the deceased, and those injured both in body and spirit,” the senators wrote.
“They must also conduct a thorough investigation and afford the accused full due process. These will not be easy tasks, and will be made even more difficult if conducted within a politically charged atmosphere.”
Darrell Brooks, 39, allegedly used his Ford Escape to blow past police barricades and plow into a group of revelers at the Milwaukee-area city’s annual Christmas parade.
The career criminal — who had called for violence against white people and expressed his admiration of Adolf Hitler’s mass murder of Jews — had been released from jail after allegedly running over his girlfriend with the SUV earlier that month.
Days before the statement, Johnson blasted Democrats for rhetoric and policies that led to the massacre, in his opinion.
“When you look the other way, when you almost encourage lawlessness — just like, let’s face it, you have political figures during the summer riots of 2020 encouraging people to donate to the bail fund so you can bail these people out … When you encourage lawlessness, you’re going to get more of it,” Johnson said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.
“It becomes more and more violent. It starts spilling over from crime-ridden, generally Democrat-governed cities into the surrounding areas,” the senator added. “I think that’s probably what we witnessed here in Waukesha.”
His comments were echoed on the program the next day by Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who blamed Democratic “funding far-left, radical DAs and prosecutors” for the disaster.
“I’m not that conspiratorial,” the congressman added, “But it is pretty obvious that there’s people like George Soros who are funding these far-left, radical DAs and prosecutors around the country, which means millions of dollars.”
A day after the attack, fellow Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia took to Twitter to rhetorically ask if “mainstream media, Democrats, and even the President of the United States” incited the mass murder.
Former President Donald Trump called Brooks a “rough cookie” on Fox News Tuesday, but told host Sean Hannity he took solace in the fact the suspected killer — an aspiring musician who once rapped “f–k Donald Trump” — was not a supporter of his.