Donald Trump never fails to find a scapegoat for every problem. Terrorism is a Muslim problem. Rape and murder are undocumented immigrant problems. Inner city violence is a Democrat problem. He never fails to rage-tweet and assign blame after every tragedy.
But when two mass shootings in a single week are tied to Trump supporters who repeat his exact words as motivation for their crimes, suddenly, Trump’s advisors want everyone to stop “finger-pointing, name-calling & screaming with your keyboards.”
Perhaps Kellyanne could have thought of this peaceful, unified solution when her boss called for Muslims to be banned from traveling to the United States. Or maybe she should’ve said the same thing when the president insisted that separating infants and toddlers from their parents was justified because undocumented immigrants have committed crimes. Maybe she should’ve even thought of this before the man she makes a living defending exploited a group of grieving mothers who call themselves Angel Moms to justify his immigration policies.
She didn’t say anything then. She has no right to say anything now.
The truth is that the two mass shootings, in Gilroy, California and El Paso, Texas, which left two dozen people dead and twice as many injured were committed by shooters who were white supremacists, a group emboldened by Trump’s anti-immigrant and nationalis rhetoric. The shootings followed testimony by Trump’s appointed FBI director, who said that white supremacists were increasingly becoming more violent and that they made up nearly half of all domestic terrorism arrests. That testimony was met by Trump and other Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, with outrage over ANTIFA. To date, Trump has neither dialed back his hateful rhetoric, nor has he disavowed white nationalism.
Kellyanne can save her platitudes about unity and not assigning blame for some other crowd, because Twitter wasn’t having it. Read some of their comments below.
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license
