On a weekend that added two more mass murders to this nation's ever-growing list, many Republican leaders tried their damnedest to avoid the press rather than discuss Trump's promotion of white nationalism or continued Republican obstruction of any and all new gun safety measures. CNN host Jake Tapper reported that the Republican Texas governor, lieutenant governor, both senators and the White House itself declined his invitations to appear. The White House did provide "acting" chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to ABC's This Week, where his primary task was, of course, defending Donald Trump against all available evidence that Trump's drumbeat of racist rhetoric is emboldening and encouraging white nationalist-inspired terrorism.
But some Republican leaders did manage to scurry to more friendly Fox News cameras in order to better dispense, unchallenged, their preferred talking points. Whatever party hack scribbled up what the Republican line would be, on a weekend that made the link between racist rhetoric and violence excruciatingly clear, they evidently have been frozen in ice since the Reagan administration and were thawed out for this one day and task. The "party line" for Republicans on this day would be that all these problems with guns, racist extremism and rampant violence is Actually the fault of ... video games?
“We’ve always had guns. We’ve always had evil. But what’s changed where we see this rash of shooting? And I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill.” Texas Lt. Governor and megahack Dan Patrick offered to Fox News, offering a self-humiliating take previously offered by insincere liars against rock music, Dungeons and Dragons, television, The Movies Nowadays, "multiculturalism", radio, teenagers dancing, and great works of literature with the word "damn" somewhere in them.
Lest this be written off as the invention of a single hard-hard-right Texas crackpot, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy mouthed the same talking point. "The idea of these video games" is "a problem for future generations" he burped out. So yes. The party apparently came up with "it's not domestic terrorism, it is the scourge of video games" as actual strategy.
The actual motivations for the El Paso attack, in particular, are about as clear as they could be. And they are so damning, for not just Donald Trump but for Fox News' own obsession with white nationalist rhetoric, that the reason for Republican flop sweat today is equally obvious.
