Moore, Hogan join call for a more temperate political discourse

Then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Gov.-elect Wes Moore (D) in a 2022 file photo. The two issued separate calls Monday for a less-vitriolic form of political discourse. File photo by Danielle E. Gaines.

Maryland’s current and most recent governor separately called for a less vitriolic form of American politics Monday.

Neither Gov. Wes Moore (D) nor his Republican predecessor, Larry Hogan, are known for their support of Donald Trump. Both, however, said the failed assassination attempt on the former president and presumed Republican presidential nominee is a “clarion call” to turn down the heated rhetoric that dominates American politics.

Moore, in an 18-minute speech to the NAACP national convention in Las Vegas, called for prayers for “the healing of our nation’s soul.”

Moore said Americans need to work together, even though we live in “a time when political vitriol has become an assumption now, instead of the exception; at a time when we have grown so numb to the images of conflict and bloodshed that the pain we feel is no longer piercing, it’s now more of a chronic pain; at a time when people want to turn to those they disagree with into enemies, even though we do know that there is far more than unites us than divides us.”

“At a time when so much is at stake for our country, it’s history that tells us there are two responses to the brokenness that we face. We can turn our heads and ignore reality, or we can work together to heal,” Moore said.

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His comments Monday afternoon came on the same day that Republicans convened in Milwaukee, where they formally nominated Trump for president. Two days earlier, Trump suffered injuries in an assassination attempt at a campaig rally in Pennsylvania, where a rally-goer and the alleged shooter died and two others were critically injured.

The shooting, which remains under investigation, triggered a wave of calls for a less heated form of political speech.

Earlier in the day, Hogan, the two-term Republican governor, said during an interview on WBAL radio that “the exhausted majority of Maryland, Marylanders, and Americans are just kind of fed up with the anger. We see it’s now reached a boiling point, where we’re a tinderbox. We have to lower the temperature.”

Hogan, the current GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, has been openly critical of Trump and refused to vote for his party’s nominee in 2016 and 2020. He is skipping the party’s nominating convention in Milwaukee this week.

In 2019, Hogan used his second inaugural address to focus on divisive political rhetoric.

“I’m an optimistic guy by nature. I’m very concerned,” Hogan said on WBAL Monday. “I think we’re at a critical turning point. Really it could be very volatile. I don’t want to see gasoline thrown on the fire on either side. I think it’s really time. It’s not just rhetoric. We have to come together as a nation.”

In Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott (D) took a different approach, saying the attack on the former president should open a “deep” and “real” discussion on gun control.

“As I said over the weekend, violence anytime … has no place in American democracy,” Scott said. “We understand and know that, unfortunately, violent incidents happen over and over and over and over again here in this country.”

Scott said he was pleased Trump “was not seriously harmed” but that “someone lost their life” — a reference to Corey Comperatore, 50, a firefighter at the rally, who died shielding his wife and children with his own body.

“The average American citizen should not be able to possess an AR-15 … but we let anybody just go on out and buy them,” said Scott, speaking to reporters in Baltimore. “Those kinds of conversations, I hope … get pushed back to the forefront and that we don’t allow this to turn into some political conversation, but a real conversation.”

– Maryland Matters reporter Danielle J. Brown contributed to this report.

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