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Law enforcement authorities said packages containing devices and addressed to the homes of Obama and Clinton were intercepted by the Secret Service, while an explosive device was found at Soros’s home.

In addition, a suspicious package addressed to Brennan was found at CNN’s New York headquarters and another, addressed to Waters, was discovered at a congressional mail sorting facility. A similar package was also found addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Jr.

Photo by Kevin Hagen/AP Photo

Trump and other Republican leaders rushed Wednesday to decry the thwarted attacks on Democrats and CNN, saying that such acts cannot be tolerated. For many politicians, the day was a reckoning – a sobering pause just 13 days from Election Day to reflect on a political atmosphere notable for apocalyptic imagery and violent confrontations.

Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Trump said he and officials in his administration were “extremely angry, upset, unhappy about what we witnessed” and vowed that “the safety of the American people is my highest and absolute priority.”

The president sounded a call to all Americans to unite, though he did not address the poisonous tone of his own campaign rhetoric.

We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America

“We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America,” Trump said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded in a joint statement: “President Trump’s words ring hollow until he reverses his statements that condone acts of violence.”

They went on to argue that Trump has “divided Americans with his words and actions,” citing his cheers for Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., for body-slamming a journalist; his equivocations over the deadly neo-Nazi and white supremacist rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia; his encouragement of supporters at rallies who have gotten violent with protesters; his praise for foreign dictators who murder their own citizens; and his attacks on the free press as “the enemy of the people.”

Trump traveled Wednesday evening to Wisconsin for a campaign rally, where he sought to make a show of behaving himself by pointing out during his relatively subdued speech that he was “trying to be nice.”

Photo by Eric S. Lesser-Pool/ Getty Images

“No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, coercion or control,” Trump told the crowd in Mosinee.

Trump again shirked responsibility for his own inflammatory contributions to the political discourse and instead assigned blame to others. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative – and oftentimes, false – attacks and stories,” he said.

And the president who has made a sport out of mocking his political rivals with nicknames like “Crooked Hillary” exhorted others in the political arena to “stop treating their opponents as morally defective.”