If Trump’s To Blame For El Paso Shooting, Is Warren To Blame For Dayton?

by John Merline, I&I Editorial: As night follows day, the two horribly tragic mass shootings have Democrats pointing fingers of blame at President Trump. Except one shooter, in addition to being a white supremacist, was also an anti-corporatist environmentalist who backs universal health care, and the other was a leftist supporter of Elizabeth Warren. Trying to pin the blame for these maniacs’ murderous actions on any one person, other than the shooter, is political opportunism at its worst.

Beto O’Rourke jumped in on Sunday, declaring that Trump was responsible for the shooting in El Paso, Texas, which claimed 20 lives and injured 26 more. O’Rourke declared that Trump “is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country. And it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country, and it leads to violence.”

O’Rourke went on to claim that “We’ve had a rise in hate crimes every single one of the last three years during an administration where you have a president who’s called Mexicans rapists and criminals.”

O’Rourke is hardly the only one blaming Trump. Critics instantly seized on a manifesto allegedly penned by the suspected shooter, in which he complains about the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” to link the shooting to Trump.

Princeton professor Eddie Glaude said on “Meet the Press” that “Hispanic invasion” is “almost the exact same language of the president of the United States.”

But assuming that manifesto — posted on the Drudge Report — is credible, the person who wrote it also happens to share many policy positions with Democrats. He’s mad about the environment, he wants universal health care, he hates big corporations and job-killing automation.

The manifesto, for example, complains that “our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heaing (sic) the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over harvesting resources.”

“Water sheds (sic) around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands.”

The writer says that “Achieving ambitions social projects like universal healthcare and (universal basic income) would become far more likely to succeed if tens of millions of dependents are removed.”

He attacks greedy corporations: “This is why corporations lobby for even more illegal immigration even after decades of it of (sic) happening. They need to keep replenishing the low-skilled labor pool.”

If it weren’t for the tirade against Mexicans and for racial separation, you’d think the manifesto writer was an Elizabeth Warren supporter.

He’s also bipartisan in his complaints when it comes to immigration. “The inconvenient truth is that our leaders, both Democrat AND Republican, have been failing us for decades. They are either complacent or involved in one of the biggest betrayals of the American public in our history. The takeover of the United States government by unchecked corporations.”

The manifesto author even makes it clear that Trump isn’t the reason he’s acting out. “My ideology has not changed for several years. My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president. I (sic) putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case.” His inspiration, he claimed, was a mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand earlier this year.

The only thing the manifesto makes clear is that the author of it is an entirely deranged psychopath.

In the case of the shooter who killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, he was a leftist Elizabeth Warren supporter and a Satanist.

“I want socialism, and I’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding,” he reportedly wrote in one tweet.

So is Warren to blame for that one? Nope, Democrats are blaming Trump for that tragic shooting as well. Trump, you see, is responsible because his rhetoric makes leftists so mad they lash out.

Trump’s critics have blamed him for every other mass shooting since he took office. They blame him for every hate crime (many of which have turned out to be hoaxes). They blame him for the violence perpetrated by far-left Antifa mobs. They even blame him for bad weather.

But if Trump is to blame for the all mass shootings since he took office, doesn’t that make Barack Obama responsible for the 24 mass shootings that took place while he was in the White House? Nobody dared suggest any such link, not even when Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and killed five police officers and injured nine others because he was angry about what he perceived to be racist cops. That shooting came after Obama had been stoking racial animosity regarding law enforcement. Nor did anyone blame Bernie Sanders when a fervent supporter attempted to assassinate several Republican lawmakers and, in the case of Rep. Steve Scalise, nearly succeeded.

Clearly, the country faces a terrible problem — one that will not be solved by another round of gun control laws, since none of the shootings in the past would have been prevented by the laws gun control advocates want to pass. Nor will blaming Trump achieve anything.

Those who truly care about saving innocent lives will focus on things that might actually make a difference. Like whether increased social isolation and realistic first-person shooter video games contribute to mass shootings. Or whether there should be more armed security in public places. Or the merits of allowing people to carry concealed weapons for self-protection. When Democrats make these things the topic of conversation after a mass shooting, you’ll know that they actually want to do something about it.
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John Merline (@ibd_jmerline) is a senior writer at Investor’s Business Daily (@IBDInvestors) covering health reform, tax policy, economics and regulatory policy.

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