White House counselor Kellyanne Conway says the media needs to dial back their coverage of the mosque shooting that left 50 people dead in New Zealand and start praying.
During an appearance on Fox News Saturday, Conway accused the media of politicizing the tragedy and suggested that journalists — rather than doing their jobs and reporting — should remain silent:
“They insert themselves ― ‘I must speak! I must say something!’ ‘No, you don’t. You can actually shut up and pray for people and wait for the authorities to make their judgments.”
Kellyanne is probably testy because the accused shooter, Brandon Tarrant, referenced her boss, President Donald Trump, in the 75-page manifesto he posted online before he went on his murderous rampage, writing that Trump was a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
Conway then tried to provide political cover for Trump, who has yet to condemn white nationalism or right-wing terror in the same terms he’s repeatedly used for terror acts committed by Islamic extremists:
“Look at what the president said right away, condemning violence, condemning hate, standing with the people of New Zealand.”
But Trump refused to stand against anti-Muslim bias and hatred, even going so far as to say that right-wing terror is not a growing problem, telling reporters in the Oval Office Friday:
“I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”
But as NBC reports, right-wing extremism has proven to be more deadly in recent years than that committed by groups such as ISIS or Al Qaeda:
“Between 2008 and 2016, far-right plots and attacks outnumbered Islamist incidents inspired by groups such as ISIS by almost 2 to 1, according to an independent database compiled by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
“The number of hate groups operating across America also rose to a record high of 1,020 in 2018, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The vast majority of those groups adhere to some form of white supremacist ideology, the center said.”
The reason Donald Trump won’t condemn white nationalist violence and its adherents could not possibly be clearer: They constitute a portion of his ever-shrinking base and he doesn’t want to upset them. After all, this is the same man who said there were “very fine people” among neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. He sympathizes with these terrorists and isn’t about to abandon them.
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