OBSERVER Photo by Sara Holthouse Chautauqua Institution welcomed Julián Castro And Kevin McCarthy to have a conversation about the current political time in America.

CHAUTAUQUA — Following the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump last Saturday, Chautauqua Institution used the final lecture of its current week to discuss the current political time America is in with Julian Castro, former Democratic candidate for president and current chief executive officer of the Latino Community Foundation, and Kevin McCarthy, former Republican Speaker of the House.

The original theme of the week was “Eight Billion and Counting: The Future of Humankind in a Crowded World,” which Chautauqua president Michael Hill did address later in the discussion with the two men, but began with a discussion about the assassination attempt and America’s political climate.

“In our Monday Daily I wrote to you all after the attempted assassination of former president Trump, who is now officially the nominee for the Republican party,” Hill said. “In that column I asked you to demonstrate that Chautauqua can be above the normal divisiveness of our time.”

Hill introduced McCarthy and Castro as two political figures with two different opinions, saying that he suspected some topics in the discussion will have audience members who greatly agree and greatly disagree with it. Hill said Chautauqua has an obligation to model what everyone yearns for in America, a way to talk about these differences without turning it into a campaign rally or food fight.

“If we turn this morning into a chance to clap or boo when we agree or disagree I think we’ve missed our chance to have what can be a very, very informative morning, and I hope you’ll accept the challenge and privilege that that presents to all of us,” Hill said.

Hill began the discussion with McCarthy and Castro by asking them about the political time in American history, 108 days before the 2024 election. They addressed that it is a time of political violence that has not been seen in a long time, citing attempted and successful assassination attempts in the 1960s such as Martin Luther King Jr and more current attacks such as Gabby Giffords and Paul Pelosi. McCarthy added one more to the list, saying that just recently someone tried to kill his son.

“I don’t put this out publicly but this week a man was sentenced that tried to kill my son, after the debt ceiling, he tracked my son who lives in San Francisco, he planned and walked across the street and fortunately officers picked him up beforehand,” McCarthy said. “And I hope we all take a deep breath and say our rhetoric may have gone too far.”

McCarthy continued by saying that going too far is not only on just politicians but on everyone, adding that even in the news there is less actual news to be found rather than opinions. He said the government is designed for compromise, but that no one wants to because they’d rather work on destroying the other side.

“I hope in these moments in time we all take a deep breath and say, ‘you know what, this has gone too far’,” McCarthy said. “‘And I want to keep my beliefs but I want to respect the other person’s beliefs as well.'”

Additionally, McCarthy said he talked to Trump the day after the assassination attempt, saying that he was a different person. He said we should all take this opportunity to change as the rhetoric has gone too far.

Castro agreed with McCarthy, saying that the rhetoric needs to be tamped down, but adding that the assassination attempt was consistent with American culture.

“I think, unfortunately, it is also consistent with the American culture that we live in today,” Castro said. “I live in San Antonio, Texas, not far from Uvalde, Texas where 19 school children and two teachers a couple of years ago got massacred with the same type of weapon used a few days ago. I also think that unfortunately in the digestion of that event just in the last week it points out how short our collective attention span is.”

Castro discussed how many times the news cycle has moved on since then, saying that this is one of the challenges of having a short attention span, which does not allow people to sit and reflect on moments like this because they move on so quickly. Being able to get news and entertainment from wherever you want makes it difficult to stop and reflect and prevent more moments such as this, he said.

“My hope also, coming out of this, is that it’s going to be a cautionary tale to help prevent other types of incidents,” Castro said. “Obviously there’s a major investigation that’s going to happen into what went wrong at that site, because clearly there was a big failure there. My hope is that that is going to protect other people, not just people in office but also, somebody lost their life there, somebody who was just supporting a candidate that they agreed with. My hope is that is the learning that prevents something like that again in the future.”

A big step towards preventing this is a call for unity, which both McCarthy and Castro discussed. McCarthy said that after the assassination attempt President Joe Biden called Trump to check in on him, which he called the first step in a different direction for the country. The two also addressed the other big question being thrown around in the national media as to whether or not Biden would drop out of the race or continue to run for a second term. Discussion focused on what would happen if he did or did not, the conflict this is creating in the Democratic party and the need for a strong candidate to potentially prevent Trump returning to office. Both McCarthy and Castro addressed that Biden was not the same candidate as he was when he ran in 2020, and the potential for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the nominee instead.

Hill asked the two when the last time such divisiveness appeared on both sides of the political spectrum, and if what we are currently seeing in regards to both Trump and Biden’s situations is rare.

“This is very rare, but you have to understand that this is all happening in a world that looks like 1938,” McCarthy said. “How did World War I begin? Think for a moment, what if President Trump’s head was turned the other way? What if he had been killed and then the Republicans walked into their convention and tried to select somebody, and others, would they try violence?”

McCarthy also addressed that there is a question of age for both nominees, and that back in the 1960s all candidates were in their 40s. He added that he thought after this America would potentially go back to that.

Conversation continued by addressing the Democrats and Republicans having different views of what was a threat to democracy, having a deeply polarized nation, and that people are interested in unity and solutions. Some of the division comes from the way Congress and other governmental bodies are set up, set to divide Democrats and Republicans, along with other items that the American people have recently lived through, such as the Covid pandemic and January 6.

Conversation briefly turned to Chautauqua’s theme of the week, where both McCarthy and Castro discussed the growing population of the world, immigration to the United States, and the United States seeing itself as part of a neighborhood in the world instead of being above others. Younger and older demographics were also discussed, along with climate change and foreign policy. The two men called for a change in policy, such as needing an immigration system that works but also not turning everyone away as eventually that would lead to the United States begging for people to come live here.

When speaking with the Post-Journal and other reporters after the lecture, both men reemphasized things they touched on in the discussion, including respecting others opinions and working towards unity. They both also discussed the potential of Harris replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee, and focusing on making sure democracy works.

When asked about the potential for America to become more unified in the future, Castro said he hopes that after the assassination attempt on Trump that America can find a way to work together even with different opinions.

“American citizens can do their part and make sure to respect others’ opinions,” Castro said. “Seek others with different opinions and form a healthy relationship with those people. We can all do our own part. This is why Chautauqua is such a special place and a model for the country we want, where we can reflect, be informed and pay attention to these issues, and talk about them without being at each other’s throats.”