DeWine, other Republicans, differ with Vance on blaming Biden for Trump shooting
MILWAUKEE, Wisc. – The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump cast a pall over the Ohio delegation as it convened in Wisconsin to nominate him president.
The 79 delegates and 68 alternates, in a hotel ballroom on the shores of Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, said prayers for Trump and the supporter who was killed at Saturday's rally in Pennsylvania. They held a moment of silence.
Unlike Trump's running mate and Ohio's freshman senator, Sen. J.D. Vance, many of the top Republican officials on Monday didn't blame Democrats.
Vance, hours after the bullet grazed Trump's ear, blamed Biden's "rhetoric" in a post posted on X.
"The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs," Vance said in a post on X. "That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."
Gov. Mike DeWine, when asked by The Enquirer on Monday morning, said he disagreed with Vance. The shooter, a registered Republican identified as 20-year-old Pennsylvania man Thomas Crooks, appeared to have acted alone, DeWine said.
"The FBI is going through an exhaustive examination on what might motivate them," DeWine said. "That's what they do. Until we know or have some better indication of what might motivate him, we don't know what motivated him. We have no idea."
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who was the featured speaker at the Ohio GOP's first breakfast, told the press afterwards that the shooter alone was to blame.
"Who's to blame is the guy who pulled the trigger," Yost said. "This notion that every evil-doer in our country is compelled by some kind of social circumstance to act is the worst sort of nonsense."
Yost did agree with Vance that some of Biden's statements have been "appalling" and said "he ought to be ashamed and apologize."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Trump shooting: What Mike DeWine, JD Vance said about who is to blame
