The massacre that left 49 people dead at two New Zealand mosques was an act of terror—and the White House wants to make sure Donald Trump gets credit for saying so. “I just spoke with the President, he made it very clear this is an act of terror,” a top White House aide told Fox News. Did he, now?
How about acknowledging that it was an act of terror that explicitly identified Trump himself as an inspiration, a “symbol of white identity and common purpose”? Ha, no, of course not. Of course the White House is trying to claim credit for calling a terrorist attack a terrorist attack without naming what kind of terrorism this is. That might mean it would have to repudiate white nationalism in a real and believable way—or that Trump would come out again to undermine any criticism of white nationalism he was pressured to express.
Trump’s lone tweet on the massacre was “thoughts and prayers” run through a thesaurus, after which he returned to urging a “Jexodus” of Jewish people from the Democratic Party and railing against the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice for their imagined crimes against him, culminating in “.....THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!” So you can’t say he wasn’t showing emotion on Twitter this morning … it was just about himself being investigated, not about 49 people slaughtered for their faith, let alone about his own role in inspiring that.