On Tuesday, France was hit by a terrorist attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg. Two people were left dead from gunshot wounds and a third was left critically injured. On Wednesday morning, Trump decided to tweet about it. He offered no sympathy or solidarity with our allies in France. He just chose for no reason at all to tie the attack to his demands for $5 billion in taxpayer money to build a useless and unnecessary border wall.
The Washington Post reported that:
‘A manhunt is still underway for the suspect who was wounded during the attack Tuesday night in the eastern city of Strasbourg and has been identified by media as 29-year-old Cherif Chekkatt. Authorities have only referred to him so far by his first name.
‘He said the suspect was known to security services and became radicalized during one of his many stints in prison. He was last released from French prison in 2015 but German authorities say he was then arrested and imprisoned for theft across the border before being deported back to France in 2017.’
There’s a reason that Chekkat was deported back to France. He is a French citizen, born and raised in Strasbourg, the city that he terrorized. He is not an immigrant or a refugee.
The highest number of deaths across the world on record as the result of terrorist attacks was just around 40,000 people. It was a statistical outlier, as the highest number on record other than that year is around 13,000. The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the U.S., just as in most countries, have been committed by citizens of the country attacked.
Terrorism is a constant fearmongering tactic used by the GOP to stoke xenophobic fear in their base. They absolutely refuse, however, to pass common sense gun law reform. Every year just in the United States, nearly that many people on average, approximately 33,000 people, are killed by legal firearms.
Twitter noted Trump’s false equivalency. Read some of their comments below:
