Imagine a president who can’t credibly attend funerals for victims of mass killings (because he inspired the violence). Takes no imagination. We’ve got one.
Someone shouts “shoot them” when Trump asks what to do about immigrants. He agrees.
50 thoughts on “Imagine”
Comments are closed.
raw story: He is encouraging this’: Beto O’Rourke nails Trump and Fox News as ‘most responsible’ for racist mass shooting
[…]
…Americans “have to acknowledge the hatred, the open racism that we’re seeing.”
“There is an environment of it in the United States,” he said. “We see it on Fox News, we — we see it on the Internet and we see it from our commander-in-chief.”
“He is encouraging this,” O’Rourke continued. “He doesn’t just tolerate it, he encourages it, calling immigrants rapists and criminals and seeking to ban all people of one religion. Folks are responding to this. It doesn’t just offend us, it encourages the violence we’re seeing including in my home town of El Paso yesterday.”
O’Rourke noted that the El Paso shooter had cited the Christchurch shooter, who cited Trump in his manifesto.
“This anti-immigrant rhetoric, and again it is not just President Trump, but he’s certainly as the person in the position of greatest public trust in power most responsible for it,” he added. “This is Fox News, this is what we’re seeing on the Internet, this is the toleration of intolerance and racism in this country, and this is what we’re seeing here today and it will continue to happen unless we call it out and unless we change it.”
O’Rourke told CNN that he considers the president to be a “white nationalist.”
op ed in the guardian: We must call the El Paso shooting what it is: Trump-inspired terrorism
[…]
First, the assertion that Trump can be absolved of responsibility because he condemns violence by white supremacists reflects a misunderstanding of how homegrown domestic terrorism works.
It doesn’t require an overt appeal to violence to motivate an ideological extremist to engage in violence. Indeed, individuals often move from being a passive supporter of a cause to a mobilized killer when their political grievances are amplified, and their enemies are dehumanized.
So when Trump goes on Twitter and television calling migrants “invaders” and dehumanizes them by suggesting they are “infesting” America, he is motivating aggrieved individuals to take action into their own hands by using violence.
Second, the claim that Trump shares no blame for the shooting because he rejects the white supremacist ideology of the El Paso shooter is blatantly at odds with the facts. Indeed, the central political project of the Trump presidency has been reducing the political power of non-white people in America – a key tenet of white supremacist thinking.
[…]
Finally, while Trump does not overtly call for his supporters to use violence to further his agenda, his rhetoric is infused with notions of violence and dehumanization. The “send her back” chant Trump allowed to continue for 13 seconds at a campaign rally was an explicit call for the power of the state to be used to forcibly expatriate a foreign-born immigrant citizen. Last week he called a minority community in Baltimore a “rodent, rat-infested mess” – mixing images of urban minorities with inhuman pests and vermin.
These messages are not lost on people like the El Paso shooter: “Your president shares your view that immigrants and racial minorities are a scourge on America. They are not deserving of the privileges of citizenship and must be denied political power at all costs. They are animals anyway, so the use of violence is permissible.”
We remain 15 months from the 2020 election. It is staggering to imagine how much more violence this president may motivate if he continues down this deeply disturbing path.
David Schanzer is a professor at the Sanford School of Policy at Duke University and the director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security
https://youtu.be/x5IUsrFd2fk
in case you don‘t have time or inclination to watch above video, here’s hollywood reporter reporting on it:
Before his opening theme song played, Oliver took a moment to address the audience about gun control and the “tough, tough day” that America had experienced.
“While it’s still very early, it does feel like there are a couple of points that seem worth mentioning here. First, when it comes to gun control, I know it can feel like everything’s been said before … but while the depressingly familiar numbness that you may be currently feeling can help you handle the pain in the short term, in the long term, it can actually be a real problem because unless something hurts as much as it’s supposed to, nothing gets done about it,” he said.
Oliver continued: “And something has got to be done here, and not just about guns, but the El Paso shooting is currently being investigated as a hate crime. And the shooter’s manifesto featured anti-immigrant language that may well be familiar to you from certain cable networks and certain presidents. Clearly, white nationalism and anti-immigrant hysteria did not start with this president, but he certainly seems to have created an environment where those kinds of views can fester and indeed thrive. In fact, just three months ago as he was deliberately winding up a crowd with the image of 15,000 immigrants marching toward the border, this happened.”
Oliver then showed a clip of Trump at a rally, saying: “How do you stop these people? You can’t.” “At this point, an audience member shouts, “Shoot them!” Trump laughs and quips: “That’s only in the Panhandle [where] you can get away with it that statement. Only in the Panhandle.”
Oliver went on to argue that Trump’s response to that statement could have terrifying consequences.
“Here’s the thing about that,” Oliver said. “It is not only in the panhandle what you can get away with that statement, you can now get away with this all over the country — and, as he just made painfully clear, in any room the actual president is in, which is absolutely appalling. And that is something we cannot afford to get numb to. Because if that ever even a moment feels like it’s become normal, we are completely fucked.”
[continues]
Not being a psychologist allows me to guess that SFB does not comprehend or feel what these massacres are doing to America, without having to pay some professional cost. That he has no feelings or empathy ensures that he can play golf and let some staffer come up with TP to cover the wounds. As a white supremacist he might feel some tiny bit of enjoyment, but I tend to doubt that too.
Speaker Pelosi has to announce the articles of impeachment soon.
wapo:
Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes
There is suggestive evidence that Trump’s rhetoric matters.
[…]
Using the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism map data (HEAT map), we examined whether there was a correlation between the counties that hosted one of Trump’s 275 presidential campaign rallies in 2016 and increased incidents of hate crimes in subsequent months.
To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred.
We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.
Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best unrealistic. In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes. Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting.
Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.
What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.
wapo:
President Trump called Monday for “strong background checks” in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and suggested pairing gun legislation with immigration reform, a top priority of his that he has failed to move through Congress.
“We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain,” Trump said in early-morning tweets, referring to the massacres that left 29 people dead.
“Likewise for those so seriously wounded,” he said. “We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!”
Trump’s tweets came three hours ahead of planned remarks at the White House on the shootings.
It remained unclear how explicit Trump would be in his call for stronger background checks and how heavily he would lean on congressional Republicans to take action.
In late February, the Democratic-led House approved the first major new firearm restrictions to advance in a generation. The proposed legislation would amend federal gun laws to require background checks for all gun sales and most gun transfers.
Federally licensed dealers are required to run background checks on people who buy guns, but private sellers who are not federally licensed are not. Under the bill, private parties would have to seek out a federal licensee to facilitate a gun deal.
The next day, the chamber passed a separate bill that would extend the time for the government to complete a background check on someone trying to buy a gun from a licensed dealer before the sale can go through.
Neither measure, each of which passed with mostly Democratic votes, has advanced in the Senate.
In the wake of the latest mass shootings, Democrats have urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to call senators back to Washington from recess to take action.
a little too late for those who’ve died since the House passed and sent to Senate in February the gun reform bills.
wiki: As of August 4, 2019, 251 mass shootings have occurred in 2019 that fit the inclusion criteria of this article. This averages out to 1.2 shootings per day. In these shootings, 979 people were shot; of those people, 246 have died.
their blood is on the hands of trump and mitch
Anyone who supports or votes for anyone in this administration and Trump is complicit. Period.
tiptoe,
I saw your response to my comment yesterday that mentioned the Antifa comment. I think I poorly worded the comment while I was posting it in a rest stop – I meant to express that I thought the warning to Antifa was bullshit when the attack it was a response to had no credible link to any Antifa group and and appeared to be an attempt to ignore that the shooter was a white guy with a semi-automatic rifle trying to hurt Mexicans, kinda like SFB said could only be done in the (Florida) panhandle. I suppose we should add Texas to that. I think we agree on the issue. And your 8:49 comment this morning – spot on.
Disconnect the legality/illegality of weapons from the President’s clearly intolerable promotion of violence.
A rather candid, not office friendly, response from Beto to a reporter’s question. It is my understanding this was a question ask him as he was walking to him car and not a planned event.
https://youtu.be/qGvcVP4Keu0
Flatus, with all due respect, no. There was an assault weapons ban passed under Clinton that the idiots in DC let expire under Bush and that the Congress resisted any attempt by Obama to revive and make permanent the expired ban. Almost all mass shootings in the US since then have been with weapons that (with technical corrections to the bill) would not have been legally in the hands of the perpetrators. While both issues can be addressed separately (for instance SFB can be defeated in 2020 without any changes or renewal of the 1994 act), and the reprehensible comments of SFB are arguably not directly tied to the acts of the people who hate the groups that SFB maligns as rapists, criminals and invaders and the legal sale of semi-automatic assault styled weapons are arguably not the direct cause of the shootings, denying that there is a very strong link between both the SFB comments inciting hate of immigrants and the legal availability of the weapons and the continued massacres of our citizens. So, with all due respect, I will not disconnect those issues.
I find words interesting: Antifa
Jack, Beto’s response was appropriate I’d say – might make me take a closer look at him.
Flatus, how do you unlink them? take away either one and the shooting in El Paso doesn’t happen. It is a perfect storm event.
Jack
pogo, yeah, it does make you say, “so where has this Beto been hiding the last 6 months”
I think the difference is a presidential campaign is about things in the abstract. El Paso isn’t a very big city, so this is home, this is personal.
Jack
Beto said it for all of us today. Just print the bumper sticker.
“Jesus Christ, of course he’s racist!” – Beto O’Rourke, thinking up the bumper sticker every Democrat should be using.
Something good,
Neighbors in Nashville Tenn. band together and prevent Ice from arresting their neighbor.
As it should be, good neighbors are important.
Jack
Jamie, best to drop the “jesus christ” off that bumper sticker. it could be read the wrong way by rw religious who would be joyful to hear He’s one of them and not the guy who said crazy stuff like love your enemies, don’t kill and turn the other cheek.
wapo:
Wall Street losses accelerate as global trade battle intensifies; all three major U.S. indexes shed 2.5 percent or more
BREAKING: The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled more than 700 points after China allowed its tightly controlled currency to slide to an 11-year low, provoking the ire of President Trump, who believes that Beijing unfairly suppresses the value of the yuan to bolster Chinese exporters at the expense of the United States.
Moscow Mitch breaks a shoulder, a wad of TP to him.
Rand Paul junks a part of his lung, a wad of TP to him too.
SFB condems something – I doubt he wrote that.
Recession soon, that is probable considering white supremacists are running the country with the desire to destroy America.
That 700 point and 2.5% drop is today. The Dow is off 5.9% (1600 pts) since last Thursday – largely on 2 things – SFB’s threat to impose more tariffs and China’s reaction. It will drop further as SFB calls on the Fed to fix this. WTH is he talking about? He DOES.NOT.HAVE.A.CLUE. what he’s doing when it comes to global trade and the American economy.
CNBC:
China has halted imports of U.S. agricultural products, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
This hits at a sensitive issue for President Donald Trump. The president claimed that he had secured large quantities of agricultural purchases when he met with President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in June. He later accused China of not following through with those purchases, leading him to announce on Thursday 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports.
Trump has ordered a $16 billion aid package to U.S. farmers, an important group for him politically, to help them during the trade battle.
Editor-in-chief of the Global Times Hu Xijin, followed by many on Wall Street for trade-war insight, said in a tweet China has suspended tariff exemption for U.S. agricultural products and Chinese companies have stopped ordering from the U.S. exporters.
China is waiting to see how trade negotiations proceed before committing to any purchases, Bloomberg News said.
China claimed the accusations that it didn’t resume buying agricultural products are “untrue,” Dow Jones reported Monday.
In another possible retaliation, China allowed its currency, the yuan, to breach the 7 level vs. the U.S. dollar, making its products cheaper.
Shares of Deere and Caterpillar fell in premarket trading.
Mean while, China is gathering troops outside of Hong Kong ready to send then in and reestablish order.
Jack
.
market fears also in the physical market place. not only are shoppers thinking twice about visiting their local malls but so are the employees in said malls. back to school purchasing is a high volume time so wonder if amazon and other e-tails are seeing an uptick more than they usually do
Stamford advocate:
Two mass shootings in two days at places of work — one a Walmart and the other a local bar — seem to have left some retail employees reeling and afraid of what could happen at their jobs.
Scores of Twitter users are tweeting stores describing how the shootings have affected their places of work. Some say they’re terrified to go to work, and others say the incidents have caused them to think about what they would do if a shooting happened at their workplace.
Hey Jamie, binging my way through the new Tales of the City. Did you notice that Armistead Maupin is in the front row of the wedding scene in episode 7?
Craig
No I didn’t, but thanks for the heads up. I’ll take a look again.
Steinem sometimes manages to irritate me, but with this she conflates two election issues that will probably never be resolved; still I got a great deal of pleasure from the prospect.
The media, and us, need to keep reminding ourselves that SFB is a low intelligence, possibly syphilitic, old man who is a narcissist. He cannot be normalized by saying he is thinking of cause and effect. He continues to spout that China is paying the tariffs on Chinese goods. He needs to be removed from the WH.
Life with cats. The big one is yakking at me to give her food. This is normal once I got her on wet food, a medical issue, so I get the can out of the refrigerator and put a little dab in her bowl. This time it was not for wet food. She wanted me to change the dog food kibble back to the previous mix of pretty colors and different flavors. She has been known to wake me at 3am to tell me the dog food bowl is empty. Some days go like this.
Inflection Point Watch: Biden tonight on Anderson Cooper CNN 8 p.m. ET
Speaking of Biden (and the rest of the crowd) there is no indication in the post 2nd debate polls that Biden lost ground or that anyone other than Bernie! gained any (and for him it was minor). I thought Warren would have gotten a bigger bounce, but whatchgonnado?
OK, I’m going to have to recheck these numbers, but if I’m right, here are the mass shooting numbers from Clinton to SFB:
President Incidents Deaths Deaths/month
Clinton 19 117 1.21
Bush 13 125 1.30
Obama 38 315 3.28
SFB 30 250 8.33
By comparison, during the 10 years of the assault weapons ban the numbers were
AWB 17 104 0.86
See any trends?
I like a lot of sports. A lot of sporting events make me happy. I retreat into a lot of sporting events just to get away from all the noise.
Today, and for the next 3 weeks it’s Little League.
Every day there is a new outrage. A new injustice. A new round of death and destruction.
But right now, I’m watching boys and girls play Little League baseball and softball. They are playing to make summer dreams come true. And I’m going to try and remember what it was like when I was 12 and I could chase my summer dreams without the intrusion of scary realities.
TravisC – brought back memories of a long ago. I was in the USAF hospital Maxwell AFB and not able to walk. One of the television programs was junior high school gymnastics. I did not have the television control (it was very limited use with only about six television stations back then). At least I had morphine, occasionally.
BB – Morphine occasionally. Yeah, I can dig it. Although I do recall some pretty wild morphine hallucinations. Yikes – when I was in the hospital with post-op complications, they gave me some morphine and the next thing I knew a giant spider was throwing me out a window.
Junior high gymnastics, eh?
Stock market still in free fall, dow futures down 500 pts
Jack
Why is it, in moments of national crises, people like Tom Brokaw get called on to add their 2 cents? As usual, Brokaw’s garbled mumbling this AM on MSNBC was something along the lines of “both sides” are at fault. Really? Did I miss something in the last 3 years since SFB came down the escalator? Time’s up for Brokaw. For that matter, time’s up for a lot of the geezers. Throw in Bob Woodward. In his feeble mind, nothing is as bad as Nixon and Watergate. Sheesh. We have a damned traitor in the WH and Woodward thinks Nixon was worse, meaning that WP’s takedown was much more monumental than Mueller’s work.
Heddy
I’m with you on Brokaw, a couple of weeks ago I tried to read some piece of nonsense he wrote got about 2 paragraphs in , rolled my eyes and moved on. Who listens to those idiots anyway?
Jack
If Trump goes to El Paso all I want to hear from him an apology. I said this in response to a tweet by my NPR station this morning then I ran across this article that laid it all out, go here to read it all
Jack
OMG … I just saw this AM’s hostage video by SFB juxtaposed with Obama’s statement today. How did we fall so far?
Since I’m ranting tonight … another one whose time is up … Biden. I’ll vote for him if he’s the nominee but I don’t want him to be the nominee. SFB got lit up, deservedly so, for putting the scene of the crime in Toledo. However, Biden was at a fundraiser and he put the events in Houston and Michigan. He corrected himself later on (after someone no doubt whispered in his ear). However, can’t we do better than another old white geezer?
Gotta love this Bloomberg head line.
World’s Richest Lose $117 Billion in One-Day Market Meltdown
Sharing the Blame
It’s also the fault of all those people who stood in front of the gunman and died. For instance, what do they mean by being dusky ? That’s a radical and offensive statement, believe me. Those dead people need to come together with the killer’s side, meet in the middle and compromise. That they don’t do so just shows their lack of good faith.
They died just to embarrass our God-given president. I call that socialism.
Jack, no. Regardless of wherever you may run into SFB you’ll never hear ANY of that shit. The first two words of each message never his lips may pass. See, he’s an asshole.
Pogo
true, but that means I really don’t want to listen to any of his babblings bout the subject.
Sad thing is we get headlines like the NY Times did.
“Trump Urges Unity vs Racism” *sigh*
Jack
The first bill trump signed into law allowed the sale or gift or firearms and ammo to maniacs.
Therefore, the ElPaso and Dayton massacres are his doing.
Lock him up. Lock them ALL up.
trump urges unity behind him, and behind his Brown Shorts’ behinds, as well.
NEW THREAD
thanks to fearless leader