A Republican congressman has called for the Democratic midterm election campaign to be “body-slammed”.

In a video posted online by Georgia Democrats, Georgia’s Republican congressman Jody Hice begins by telling an audience in Watkinsville that “the time has come” to stop Democrats, who are favored to regain control of the House of Representatives on 6 November.

He adds: “We watched for eight years as the Obama administration gradually dismantled everything you and I believe in and pushed his own socialist agenda. The time has come. The line has been drawn in the sand. And that agenda has to stop. It’s time for this so-called ‘blue wave’ to be body-slammed.”

The remark drew applause from the crowd where Hice was speaking at a campaign event for Brian Kemp, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Georgia.

Neither Hice nor Kemp immediately returned requests for comment.

Hice’s comments followed Donald Trump’s recent praise of an assault on the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, who was body-slammed to the floor and punched by the Republican congressman Greg Gianforte of Montana on the eve of his special election to Congress last year. After initially lying to the press and police about the attack, Gianforte pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to community service, anger management class and a fine.

“Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of – he’s my guy,” Trump said of Gianforte during a rally in Missoula, Montana, earlier this month. Trump suggested the unprovoked attack helped Gianforte’s electoral prospects and mimed a body-slam before going on to praise the Republican as “a tough cookie”.

The comments come amid a fraught debate over whether inflammatory rhetoric from the president and elected officials has contributed to a rise in political violence. On Saturday, a gunman killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on Jews in US history. The massacre came in the wake of a mail-bomb campaign targeting Democratic lawmakers, prominent liberal figures and CNN – all of whom have been repeatedly demeaned by Trump.

Trump again on Monday labeled the press “the true enemy of the people” and blamed journalists in part for the “anger in our country”. The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, defended the president and accused the press of wrongly blaming him for the divisions in the country.

“The very first thing that the president did was condemn the attacks both in Pittsburgh and in the pipe bombs,” Sanders said on Monday, during a tense exchange with reporters. “The very first thing the media did was blame the president and make him responsible for these ridiculous acts.”

In the closing weeks of the midterm election, Republicans have sought to cast Democrats as “an unhinged mob”. They seized on comments by the former attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Democrats to take a more combative approach to opposing Republicans. He later clarified that his remarks were in no way intended to advocate violence.

Democrats and liberal commentators have called the Republicans’ charge hypocritical, arguing that Trump has condoned violence and personally insulted political opponents at his rallies.

Hice is a two-term congressman from a heavily conservative district in eastern Georgia with a history of controversial statements, including his belief that it is appropriate for a woman to run for office “if she is within the authority of her husband”.

