Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he read the wrong speech after calling the Democrats’ agenda a “clear and present danger” at the Republican National Convention on Monday.
“Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people,” Johnson said in his remarks before the convention audience in Milwaukee.
But he later told PBS Newshour that he had intended to read a different version of the speech that called for unity, and that the teleprompter had loaded an older version of his speech.
“That speech was written last week. They literally loaded the wrong speech,” Johnson said.
“I had taken that out. Instead I’d loaded about that we needed a somber moment in history. We should heed President Trump’s call to unite,” he said.
“We must heal and unify this nation. I didn’t know how to take that out without screwing up the teleprompter.”
The comments come amid talk on both sides of the aisle about campaign rhetoric and the heightened temperature in the U.S. in the wake of the attempted assassination against Donald Trump.
The former president himself has called for Americans to united after the incident, in which a bullet grazed his ear while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pa.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was just selected as Trump’s running mate, blamed the Biden administration for the recent shooting at the former president’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania.