We didn’t hear much from Trump Saturday, except shortly before the mass murder in El Paso he was retweeting a vile message from a racist asshole who promotes a “final solution,” then 15 minutes after acknowledging the Texas massacre he tweeted encouragement to a martial arts fighter, complete with a happy Oval Office photo (that evening his sons attended the UFC fight to cheer on Daddy’s BFF).
More than a full day after the murders in Texas, and hours after the tragedy in Ohio, Trump finally said the shootings are due to mental illness, which is hogwash (other countries suffer from the same maladies), and later he blabbered that “hate has no place in our country,” even though his campaign was built on hate from Day One, and seldom has another 24 hours gone by when he hasn’t ramped up the hate on someone—Mexicans, Muslims, Congresspeople, immigrants, Democrats, veterans, foreign allies, American cities, women, the intelligence community, environmentalists, journalists, actors, sports figures, even his former staffers and cabinet members. Anyone but white supremacists.
So, we’d expect Sunday’s response, some empty Mongo nonsense about “hate bad” and of course thoughts and prayers, but nothing about his own culpability, nothing about the racism that prompted the El Paso murderer, nothing about the killer’s very trumpian manifesto, nothing about the uptick in hate crimes and white terrorism since 2016, and certainly nothing about the gun legislation passed by the House that Mitch McConnell has shut down in the Senate.
Sure, he can’t open his yap without spewing lies, but today’s boner belongs in the Trump Hall of Shame. Dig this:
Trump also took the opportunity to boast about his administration’s record. “We have done much more than most administrations,” he said. “That’s not talked about very much. But we’ve done actually a lot.”
No, it’s not “talked about very much” because you haven’t done a fucking thing. If white nationalists embrace your words and policies, you’re probably a racist. If the NRA donates more than $55 million to you and other GOP nitwits, and invites you to keynote their conventions, you’re probably not doing “more than most administrations” to stem gun violence. If anything, it’s the opposite.
After Parkland, after Pittsburgh, after Las Vegas, after nearly every mass shooting that receives national attention (most don’t), Trump yammers about background checks, waiting periods, banning assault weapons and bump stocks, and other sensible legislation, then he meets with the Murder Inc. lobby and nothing happens, except to weaken existing gun regulations.
His appointees have quietly chipped away at the National Instant Criminal Background Check System….
The administration officials narrowed a few legal definitions to make it harder to classify would-be gun buyers as ineligible…. Trump officials also purged tens of thousands of law enforcement records from the background system.
They narrowed the definition of mentally ill. And Congress and Trump rolled back an Obama-era regulation that required the Social Security Administration to send records of people receiving benefits for mental illness for inclusion in the background check system. In his recently released budget for the coming fiscal year, Trump proposed slashing millions of dollars from the budget for the background check system.
Yup, you’ve certainly “done much more than most administrations.” How ‘bout doing less, you lying, bigoted, narcissistic, predatory traitor.