An attendee at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Thursday night could be clearly heard calling for Democratic Senate candidates to be shot.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who was delivering a speech when the attendee shouted out, did not react to the outburst in the moment. A spokeswoman for Cruz declined to say whether the senator had heard it.
Cruz’s social media account later posted a clip of his speech in which a man in the audience shouted three times, “He should be shot!” — when Cruz talked about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Democratic Senate nominees Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and James Talarico of Texas.
El-Sayed said everyone who heard the calls to violence should condemn them.
“This is what has become the norm in our politics,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday night.
“Democracy is supposed to be the process by which we solve our problems peacefully. We can learn to disagree agreeably,” El-Sayed said.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) called on Cruz and every Republican to denounce the outburst.
“There aren’t even words for how chilling and disturbing this is,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) responded on X. “Threats of political violence are dangerous, unacceptable, and have no place in our democracy.”
The Talarico campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The shouts occurred shortly after Cruz said that hate contributed to the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump and the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk one year ago. It was unclear whether Cruz heard the shouts, but several other speakers during the convention did respond when hecklers interrupted them. On the first night, Trump briefly interacted with someone who complimented first lady Melania Trump.
Later on the second night, online black-market founder Ross Ulbricht — whom Trump pardoned from a life sentence for drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering — responded to a heckler who mentioned “J6ers,” referring to the Trump supporters who were prosecuted for participating in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
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