John Cornyn knocks Trump critics for blaming mass shootings on president

“The Dayton killer was a left-winger, but don’t blame Sen. Warren,” Cornyn wrote, using the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial on Tuesday.

[Opinion: Stop scapegoating — Trump didn’t cause El Paso any more than Elizabeth Warren caused Dayton]

The shooter in Dayton, Connor Betts, who killed nine people, including his own sister outside of a bar before authorities arrived and killed him, left clues to his political leanings on his social media.

“The news site Heavy.com, which gained access to Betts’ Twitter account before it was taken down, reports that his politics appear to have been left of center,” said the Wall Street Journal editorial. “The shooter recently tweeted that he would ‘happily’ vote for Senator Warren.”

Betts’ most recent tweet on the @iamthespookster account was on Aug. 3, the day of the shooting, when he retweeted another tweet that said: “Millenials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die.” He also retweeted messages supporting Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.”

The Warren, Sanders, and Biden campaigns have yet to respond to reports that the Dayton shooter was a self-described “leftist” and supporter of hers, but all were quick to cast blame on the president for inspiring the shooter in El Paso, who left an anti-immigrant racist manifesto, murdered 22 people.

“White supremacy is a domestic terrorism threat in the same way that foreign terrorism threatens our people,” Warren told CNN’s Don Lemon on CNN Tonight. “And it is the responsibility of the President of the United States to help fight back against that. Not to wink and nod and smile at it and let it get stronger in this country.”

“Mr. President: stop your racist, hateful and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Your language creates a climate which emboldens violent extremists,” Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted on Saturday.

Sanders pitting blame against Trump is a change from when he previously said that the president was not to blame for the 2018 Tree of Life Pittsburgh shooter.

Additionally, in 2017 Sanders immediately condemned the congressional baseball team shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, who shot Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise. Sanders at the time said Hodgkinson, “apparently volunteered” on his 2016 presidential campaign, and denounced him wholeheartedly.

“I am sickened by this despicable act,” Sanders said. “Let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.”

Stuart Stevens, a consultant who previously worked on the campaigns of President George W. Bush and many other Republicans, on Tuesday took issue with Cornyn’s logic concerning Warren.

“I’d blame Senator Warren if she had been using violent rhetoric and trying to score political points and raise money stoking fears about an invasion. She’s not. You know the difference. Why carry water for Donald Trump, a man you know is an idiot?” Stevens tweeted.