Trump regularly denounces acts of mass murder-unless the murderer is white

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/24/1759594/-Trump-regularly-denounces-acts-of-mass-murder-unless-the-murderer-is-white

Trump regularly denounces acts of mass murder—unless the murderer is white
Hunter
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday April 24, 2018 · 1:46 PM EDT


It sure is interesting how Donald Trump can find time to tweet condolences after acts of mass murder even in other countries, but can't muster up a single thing to say when the violence is perpetrated by a white American.

Trump, as we've long chronicled in this space, has no problem taking to Twitter to denounce even a trace of jihadist perfidy somewhere in the world. The acts of often isolated Islamist extremists repeatedly prompt him to cast suspicion on whole communities of Muslims at home and abroad, and form the basis of his apathy toward Syrian refugees as well as calls for sweeping immigration bans.

But Trump has been far more circumspect about nativist or white nationalist hate crimes, which have seen a worrying uptick under his watch. He even struggled to condemn committed neo-Nazis who rallied in his name last year, describing some of them as "very fine people."

The Washington Post writer notes Trump's conspicuous failure in the last few days to mention the conviction of a Kansas trio who plotted to bomb a mosque and the upcoming sentencing of a white nationalist who killed six in a mass shooting in Quebec, but Trump also can't seem to muster any words over the killing of four in a Waffle House in Tennessee, either. That act was perpetrated by white man who claimed to be a "sovereign citizen" and who, reports indicate, suffered from extreme paranoia and delusions; by coincidence or by design his victims were all non-white. The hero of the day, James Shaw Jr., is a black American who rushed the shooter and disarmed him before he could kill others.

There could be a lot of explanations for Trump's conspicuous silence.

It may be that mass murders in America are so commonplace that the White House no longer considers them newsworthy. Fox News may not have covered the shooting during any of the time blocks Donald Trump reserves to learn about current events. But the facts remain: Trump is ever-eager to shout and froth about any act of violence committed by an immigrant or, in fact, any non-white or non-Christian person, and acts of premeditated terrorism by white Americans are rarely, if ever, mentioned at all. For whatever reason, they do not count as newsworthy of the sort the others are.

The simplest explanation is probably the best. Trump incites his base with tweets about incidents of violence carried out by non-white perpetrators because it provides the "evidence" he needs to promote his race-based agenda. Trump ignores acts of mass murder by white perpetrators because it is not in his interest to acknowledge them; on the contrary, those incidents usually are taken as evidence of America's failure to grapple with gun violence, and send conservative groups and politicians into a defensive crouch until America can properly forget them again.

Whatever else Trump is, he is undeniably self-obsessed and forever the cynic. Every news incident anywhere in the world is either an opportunity to bang his own drum, or is nothing at all. Since Trump is far more obsessed with demonizing non-whites as everything from "rapists" to potential terrorists-in-waiting than he is outraged by violence in general, he will of course focus on an event only if it confirms, in his mind, those white supremacist notions.

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