The tragic mass murder at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, has generated charges of blame beyond the shooter himself, with President Trump blaming the liberal media and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke casting blame on Trump and even Fox News.
Following a weekend in which at least 29 people were killed and dozens wounded in two separate mass shootings — one in Texas and one in Ohio — Trump tweeted, “Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our country.”
Trump suggested that “fake news” bore at least some of the blame for the “anger and rage that has built up over many years.” He added, “News coverage has to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!”
On the other hand, O’Rourke, who represented El Paso while he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and is now a candidate for president, said it was Trump himself who was to blame for the El Paso killings. “Someone who describes Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, who has sought to ban all Muslims, all people of one religion from traveling to the United States, or who calls Nazis and white supremacists very fine people, he doesn’t just tolerate, he encourages the kind of open racism and the violence that necessarily follows,” O’Rourke said on the Sunday morning ABC TV program This Week.
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O’Rourke added, “There’s been a rise in hate crimes every single one of the last three years in this country,” but blamed Fox News as well. “And it is not solely because of President Trump. It is Fox News, it is the warnings of invasions that we hear on that channel, it’s these groups on the Internet.”
Trump also seemed to indicate that some of the blame for the shootings could be that the country doesn’t have strong enough background checks. “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer even urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “call an emergency session” to pass a gun-control bill recently passed by the Democratic-run House of Representatives.
Of course, the person who is actually to blame — the shooter — is also an environmentalist whose environmentalism is a reason he is strongly anti-immigration, arguing, “[Our] lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations.… Corporations also like immigration because more people means a bigger market for their products.… So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
Should all environmentalists be blamed for the killings in El Paso? Should all of the environmentalists who have never hurt anyone be blamed for the string of letter-bomb killings perpetrated by the Unabomber?
And if we are going to blame mere political viewpoints for the decision of someone to shoot someone, should another candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, bear responsibility for the supporter who tried to murder Republican Representative Steve Scalise? What about the Sanders-supporting socialist neighbor of Senator Rand Paul who assaulted Paul in his own front yard? Can one imagine had a supporter of Paul shot a Democrat member of the House of Representatives how the liberal media would have reacted?
O’Rourke’s remarks are particularly irresponsible. His assertion that Trump had called “Nazis and white supremacists very fine people” is an obvious reference to Trump’s remarks after the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, but O’Rourke’s description of what Trump said is just a falsehood.
Despite the repeated falsehood that Trump had called Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people,” the truth is quite different. Trump specifically said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” It is difficult to imagine how much plainer Trump could have said it than that, yet this falsehood that Trump called Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people” continues to be repeated by demagogues such as O’Rourke.
What Trump actually said was that there were “some fine people” on both sides at Charlottesville, but he did not consider the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists among them, nor did he consider the Antifa “troublemakers” who came in dressed in “black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats” typical of the left-wing protesters. He added that the incident was “a horrible moment for our country.”
O’Rourke, on the other hand, seems to be saying that those who oppose open borders should just keep their mouths shut and drop their opposition because such opposition could lead to incidents like that in the El Paso Walmart. Under O’Rourke’s reasoning, the mere expression of a political viewpoint is responsible for such shootings. If someone were to try and assault President Trump, based on O’Rourke’s falsehood, should O’Rourke take responsibility?
Some also place the blame on an inanimate object — a gun. While tougher background checks would be a nice “feel good” piece of legislation, one must wonder if Schumer and Trump really believe that such laws would really stop incidents like the one in El Paso?
And then, when such increasingly tough background check laws fail to prevent another shooting — as they inevitably will — further curtailment of the rights of the rest of America will be next.
Image of El paso shooter: Screenshot from video by ABC News
Steve Byas is a university history instructor and the author of the book History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected]
