The White House pushed back Thursday against any suggestion that President Trump's rhetoric has fueled a politically toxic atmosphere that could have contributed to Wednesday's attack on GOP lawmakers in Alexandria, Va.

"There has been quite a bit of attacking against the president," White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. Citing a dinner with Democrats earlier this week, Sanders said the president has "tried to reach out to Democrats."

More broadly, Sanders said that it would be beneficial if the nation as a whole could "bring the temperature down a little bit. I think that was the goal he laid out yesterday.”

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When Trump spoke soon after the shooting, from the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he said, “We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country.”

A 66-year-old man from Illinois, James Hodgkinson, has been identified as the shooter in the Alexandria incident, in which four people were shot and a fifth injured by shrapnel at a GOP practice for the upcoming Congressional Baseball Game. Hodgkinson was shot by law enforcement officers and died later Wednesday from his injuries.

On Facebook, a page apparently belonging to the shooter showed affiliations with online groups with incendiary names such as “Terminate the Republican Party” and “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans.” Hodgkinson also wrote a number of letters to his local newspaper blasting the GOP.

But some critics have also accused Trump of having inflamed the atmosphere with controversial statements both during his campaign and since winning election last November.

"Any debate about civility in politics begins with Trump. No one has degraded discourse more, while embracing the fringe. Fact, not opinion," New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush wrote on Twitter Thursday morning.

House Majority Whip Steve Scales (R-La.), who was shot in the hip on Wednesday, remains in critical condition following the incident and had his third surgery Thursday morning.

Trump visited Scalise in hospital in Washington on Wednesday evening.

"It's an emotional time and it was a time the president wanted to show his support for the congressman and the other victims," Sanders said.