At the beginning of October, a gunman killed 58 people and left more than 500 wounded in Las Vegas. Significantly—not to the body count but to Donald Trump’s response—that killer was an American-born white man. The event merited a tweet offering “warmest condolences and sympathies,” but the White House strongly rejected any discussion of policy changes. When an immigrant from Uzbekistan killed eight people by driving a truck down a bike path in New York City at the end of October, the response was quite different.
On October 2, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the possibility of “pursuing tighter gun laws,” and responded that:
Today is a day for consoling the survivors and mourning those we lost. Our thoughts and prayers are certainly with all of those individuals. There's a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country. There is currently an open and ongoing law enforcement investigation. A motive is yet to be determined, and it would be premature for us to discuss policy when we don't fully know all the facts or what took place last night.
On October 31, Donald Trump tweeted about ISIS before offering “thoughts, condolences and prayers.” He then went on to tweet that “I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!”
On October 2, Sanders was asked if “this is a time when this should not be a political discussion, it should be a policy discussion,” and replied that “today is more, again, like I said, a day of reflection, a day of mourning, a day of gratefulness for those that were saved. And I think that there will be, certainly, time for that policy discussion to take place, but that's not the place that we're in at this moment.”
Bright and early on November 1, Trump was attacking Sen. Chuck Schumer for sponsoring a bipartisan immigration plan in 1990, and calling for a change to immigration policy. October 2 was “a day of mourning, a time of bringing our country together.” November 1 was a day of promoting division, apparently.
Fifty-eight people killed? Mourn, don’t talk policy. Eight people killed? Don’t just talk policy—level political attacks on individual politicians over decades-old policies.