8/6/19: In the wake of a trio of
deadly shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, debate swirls around what to do
and whom to blame.
____________________
The Christchurch killer name-checked the President of the
United States, calling him “a
symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
____________________
In a front-page editorial the New York Post (a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch) calls for a ban on “weapons of war.” The editors direct their argument to the President of the United States.
God save us all, sir. People all across the nation are scared;
many feel like the country is spinning out of control. They’re looking to their
leaders for more than prayers.
America is terrified.
President Trump, you are positioned to assuage that fear. On gun
control, you are a pragmatic centrist, someone who knows there is a vast
majority of Americans who are not to the extreme left or right on this issue. They
just want the killings to stop.
Yes, we know the president regularly praises the Second
Amendment and received the National Rifle Association’s support in the 2016
race.
But the Second Amendment leaves ample room for regulating gun
rights [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], just as every other
constitutional right has its limits.
…Come up with answers. Now. Beginning with the return of an
assault weapons ban.
Meanwhile, the president is preparing to visit Dayton and El
Paso on Wednesday. Many residents of the Texas city, where 85 percent of the
population is Hispanic, don’t want him to show his mug.
Critics on the left are quick to mock his response to the slaughter, delivered the day before. “Teleprompter Trump,” they admit, sounds like a president. Trump, in the raw, sounds like a white supremacist, but one who can’t bring himself to come out of the closet and admit his proclivities.
New details emerge. We learn that the El Paso killer praised
the Christchurch, New Zealand murderer, who killed 51 Muslims at prayer in March.
Like links in a diabolical chain, the Christchurch killer name-checked Trump,
calling him “a
symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” Words matter, and
Trump has vilified Muslims and dark-skinned people again and again.
*
“He needs to realize the lethality of his rhetoric.”
WHAT ELSE has happened since the triple mass killings? In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine tried to talk to a Dayton crowd and was shouted down. “Do something! Do something!” the angry throng demanded.
Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican who represents the city in Congress, made an abrupt about face and called for a ban on military-style weapons and large-capacity magazines. This change was influenced in part by the fact his daughter was across the street at the very moment the Dayton killer opened fire – and by the knowledge that the murderer managed to unleash at least 41 rounds in under a minute. Turner, who had previously earned “A” ratings from the N.R.A., because of opposition to a ban on assault-style rifles, explained his change of heart:
This weekend, a shooter wearing
body armor opened fire in downtown Dayton with a weapon he had modified to be
able to hold 100 rounds of ammunition. Dayton Police ran towards the shooter
and neutralized him in less than thirty seconds, saving countless lives. In
those few seconds, the shooter was able to murder nine people, injure at least
27, and deeply impact the entire community. If the police had not been present
and able to instantly respond, the casualties would have been astronomical.
President Obama – who has been reluctant to criticize the
current occupant of the White House (who, by contrast, has missed no
opportunity to criticize him) – issues a rare public statement. Without mentioning Trump by name, he takes our
current leader to task for his fearmongering.
It has no place in our politics
and our public life.
And it’s time for the
overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and
political party, to say as much – clearly and unequivocally.
Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma also faults Trump. Keating knows white supremacist extremism from bloody experience. He was governor in 1995, when Timothy McVey bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That bombing left 168 Americans dead. The toll included 19 children, at a daycare center on the bottom floor of the building. Another 680 men, women and children were injured in the blast.
Now, Keating warned that the president must learn how to choose his words. “He needs to realize the lethality of his rhetoric. The truth is the president is the secular pope and he needs to be a moral leader as well as a government leader, and to say that this must not occur again – exclamation mark.”
The student newspaper at Oklahoma University, where Keating is regent, seeks him out for further comment. Keating makes it clear he sees no reason for ordinary citizens to own assault-style weapons:
“We simply can’t have this
again. When I was growing up, and I believe largely when my children were
growing up, we didn’t have this,” Keating said. “The contempt for human life,
the dismissal of an individual’s right to be left alone, and the use of race,
sex and nationality as an excuse for killing.”
Easy access to “war weapons”
also enabled the attacks, Keating said, adding that the shooters had no
previous criminal records and were able to legally purchase the weapons they
used in the attacks.
“Why are people who are not
fighting wars allowed to buy war weapons,” Keating said. “You can’t buy a
flamethrower, you can’t buy a bazooka, why should you be able to buy an AR-15?”
Keating tells student reporters he owns several guns and uses
them for recreation. He supports the Second Amendment. “This isn’t the (Second)
Amendment, to say that I can arm myself with every weapon of modern warfare,”
Keating adds. “That’s ridiculous in an urban, civilized society.
*
White
supremacists love Trump.
SO, HOW DID TRUMP spend his time before heading off to Dayton and El Paso. He went to work on Twitter. In one tone-deaf tweet he decided it would be a brilliant stratagem to bring the country together by attacking Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat running for president, based on his name and poll numbers.
Low poll numbers! Low poll numbers, in Trump’s mind, are more hideous than torn, bleeding bodies.
Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is
embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of
Texas, where I trounced him [Trump has previously claimed he had much bigger
crowds for a rally] and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the
Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement - & be
quiet!
It was the essence of Trump, petty and whiny, and anti-First
Amendment rights for critics, all in a single tweet.
Speaking of essence, Monday we had the essence of Fox News. Fox News – where if President Trump pushed a baby off the top of a ten-story building, Sean Hannity would claim, against all logic and visible evidence, that his crime paled in comparison with Hillary’s missing emails.
This time the job of denying reality fell to Tucker Carlson. As if the shooting in El Paso had never happened, Carlson weighed in on the topic of the day. White supremacist violence? Not a problem!
Below we provide our assessment:
CARLSON: It’s not the job of this show to defend the president and everything he says [Carlson claimed Monday night].
BLOGGER: That is his job. It’s the job
description of Tucker and Sean, Ainsley and Brian K., of Lou Dobbs, the
perpetually angry host of the Fox Business Channel, and four of every five
panelists on “The Five.”
CARLSON: Some things we are not going to defend [Tucker continued]. But in point of fact, [Trump] never endorsed white supremacy or came close to endorsing white supremacy. That’s just a lie. But he condemned it anyway. Their response, “he didn’t really mean it.”
BLOGGER:
Who thinks Trump might be endorsing white supremacy, besides Democrats running
for president? White supremacists! After the president attacked four Democratic
congresswomen of color, Andrew Anglin, who runs Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website responded:
Man, President Trump’s Twitter account has been pure fire
lately. This might be the funniest thing he’s ever tweeted. This is the kind of
WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for. And we’re obviously seeing it only
because there’s another election coming up. But I’ll tell you, even knowing
that, it still feels so good.
CARLSON: If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list?
Right up there with Russia probably.
BLOGGER: Maybe on Fox News, where Tucker is
contractually bound to defend everything Trump does and says, up to and
including urinating in the punch at a White House press reception, Russia is
not a problem.
We who consult other sources, know that the
following Trump campaign aides and family members have admitted suspicious and/or
illegal contacts with Russians during the 2016 election cycle: General Michael
T. Flynn (now a convicted felon), Carter Page (not charged), Michael Cohen
(felon), Felix Sater (a felon before joining Team Trump), George Nader (also a
felon before joining the team; currently indicted anew), George Papadopoulos
(felon), Roger Stone (under indictment at this time), Michael Caputo (not
charged), Donald J. Trump Jr. (not charged), Jared Kushner (not charged), Paul
Manafort (felon) and Rick Gates (felon).
CARLSON: [White supremacy?] It’s actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium.
BLOGGER: Um…that’s a lot of people…and just one
guy in one hypothetical seat went out and gunned down 46 actual human beings.
CARLSON: This is a country where the average person is getting poorer, where the suicide rate is spiking – “white supremacy, that’s the problem” – this is a hoax. Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.
BLOGGER: If you’ve never noticed, there are a lot
of “hoaxes” in the land of the right-wing nuts. Trump himself has called climate change a hoax and said President
Obama’s American citizenship was a hoax.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax.
The Parkland, Florida student protesters were
“actors” and their outrage at seeing teachers and friends murdered was a hoax.
The Trump supporter who sent pipe bombs to more than a dozen leading
Democrats and Trump critics…that was a hoax, too. The Democrats set that one
up! They mailed bombs to themselves!!!
“A
Donald Trump superfan.”
Of course, lawyers for Cesar Sayoc, the man who
sent the bombs, demolished that claim this same week. Their client, they argued
in a plea for mercy before sentencing was handed down, was “a Donald Trump
superfan.”
“In this darkness,” the lawyers
wrote in a sentencing memo, “Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”
Mr. Sayoc listened to Mr.
Trump’s self-help books and championed him on social media. He watched Fox News
religiously while working out at the gym.
“Because of Mr. Sayoc’s mental
illness, this type of [dangerous] rhetoric deeply affected him because he so
greatly admired the president,” one of Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers, Ian Marcus Amelkin,
said in court. “It is impossible, I believe, to separate the political climate
and his mental illness.”
Last fall, Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers
wrote, the “slow-boil of Mr. Sayoc’s political obsessions and delusional
beliefs” led him to build and send his 16 packages to 13 intended victims he
considered to be Mr. Trump’s enemies.
In other words, Trump’s unhinged rhetoric had
further unhinged the unhinged.
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