Sunday, July 14th 2024, 9:31 pm
News on 6 heard from an Oklahoma representative in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention.
All eyes are on security after this weekend's attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Oklahoma House Majority Floor Leader, Jon Echols says there are feelings of frustration, anger, and unease. He also says there is optimism around the event.
While we don't know yet the motive behind the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, Oklahoma Representative Echols says it's time for everyone to dial back heated rhetoric.
"There has to be a recognition that every increasing rise and violent rhetoric and I will say from the right and the left but the ever-increasing rise in violent rhetoric has led to this." Said Echols.
He says while the former president is expected to be ok, we should also remember that a man in the crowd was killed trying to protect his family.
"The shooter got very, very close but remember an ex-fire chief died, a man died as a hero while he dove on top of his wife and daughter," said Echols.
Echols says there is a responsibility for everyone, especially Oklahomans to put a stop to violence moving forward.
"On our end, we got to be Oklahomans, then we have to be Tulsans first, then we have to be Americans and we have to stop all of this extreme rhetoric that's going on," said Echols.
As he gets ready to spend the week in Milwaukee for the RNC, he has questions about how this happened and what's being done to make sure President Trump and others are safe in Wisconsin.
"Is he given the maximum amount of security secret service that he can be given? This seems like a very large gap to have happened," said Echols. "Then what do we do to make sure and recognize things like that don't happen again? I mean we cannot normalize presidential assassination attempts."
He knows national attention will be on the convention.
Echols said, "I think these next few days are going to be a week-long commercial for President Trump. I think you're going to see the resilience of the American people; I think you're going to see the resilience of the republican party."
The Republican National Convention starts Monday and runs through Thursday. Former President Trump is expected to speak Thursday when he becomes the official Republican nominee.
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