It’s funny how when a Democrat explicitly motivated by partisan politics shoots up a baseball field, everyone is supposed to take responsibility because “both sides” are to blame. But when a lunatic with no party affiliation, and who hates President Trump, allegedly sprays bullets in a synagogue, well, Republicans have a lot to answer for.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote Monday in response to the synagogue massacre, “‘Both sides’ are not responsible for the horrific political terrorism we have seen this past week” because “only the right is to blame — starting with President Trump and his complicit enablers in the Republican Party.”
Forty-eight-year-old Robert Bowers, the suspect charged with murdering 11 people and injuring several more at the Pittsburgh synagogue, was not registered with any political party, according to the Associated Press.
He apparently spent his days on a social media platform called Gab airing out his resentments, which included remarks by Bowers that Trump is “surrounded by kikes,” is “a globalist, not a nationalist,” and that “[t]here is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation.” He also said in one posting that he did not vote for Trump.
“For the record, I did not vote for him, nor have I owned, worn or even touched a maga hat,” Bowers wrote on Gab.
Absent all real evidence that Bowers was motivated by Trump or Republicans to kill nearly a dozen Jews, Robinson and others in the media have pointed to Bowers’ hatred for immigrants and its supposed link to Trump’s recent campaign rhetoric on the so-called “caravan” of Central American migrants heading to the U.S.
“Bowers was fixated on the so-called caravan of Central American migrants, which Trump and the Republicans have cynically exploited to drive turnout in the midterm election,” wrote Robinson.
Bowers was not so much “fixated” on the caravan as he was a critic of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish organization that aids refugees.
Bowers was convinced that the caravan was a product of HIAS.
“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he said in a Gab post shortly before the killing spree. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Only the news media could listen to Trump ring the alarm over immigrants coming from Central America and find its true connection to a Pittsburgh synagogue shooting carried out by a crazed anti-Semite.
“Don’t tell me that ‘both sides’ need to do better,” Robinson wrote. “Republicans who remain silent deserve to be swept out of office.”
Contrast that to what some media said about James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter, who made sure it was Republicans practicing in a baseball field outside of Washington, D.C., before he went on his rampage, most notably shooting and critically wounding Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.
In the face of all evidence that Hodgkinson was a Democrat animated to go on a shooting rampage by his own political frustrations, New York Times political reporter Glenn Thrush looked to Trump. “Any debate about civility in politics begins with Trump,” he wrote at the time on Twitter. “No one has degraded discourse more, while embracing the fringe.”
A bemused editorial in the Washington Post asked, “Who knows what mixture of madness and circumstance causes someone to pick up a gun and go on a rampage?”
Who knows?! If only there had been some clue, like if Hodgkinson belonged to a Facebook group called, “It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”
Oh, he was literally a member of a group by that exact name.
CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley ended his program the day after the shooting by decrying unspecified “leaders and political commentators who set an example” for having “led us into an abyss of violent rhetoric.”
See, when a partisan Democrat opens fire on a group of Republicans practicing baseball, everyone is called on to do better when they “set an example.” Meanwhile, Bowers didn’t like Trump, said he didn’t vote for Trump, and wasn’t a Republican, yet Trump and the GOP are expected to take full responsibility for his alleged actions.
I’d include an example of what Eugene Robinson said at the time of the Hodgkinson shooting, but he completely ignored it in his column that week, much like he and most of the media have quickly sidelined the story about a GOP county office in Florida that was shot up Sunday night.
At least he didn’t blame “both sides” for Hodgkinson.
