To the editor:

The death of Charlie Kirk is horrific. The deaths of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband along with the shooting of State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, the beating of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, are all horrific. I could go on and on. Can we please just be honest about all this?

The amount of hate speech in politics is at an all-time high. Seems to me the right has no self-awareness at all! We need to stop blaming the right and the left for all the hate and anger in our country right now and put the blame squarely where it belongs: on Donald Trump.

Yes, Donald Trump loves to talk mean and hateful and encourages his followers to talk mean and hateful. All that hate pouring into social media and being greedily consumed influences people.

There is never an excuse for this kind of violence from anyone. But while our elected leaders on the right say the radical left is to blame without even looking in the mirror is the height of hypocrisy and only entrenches the divide between sanity and insanity. I vote for sanity.

Kelly Horton,

Lawrence