Media blame on Trump for Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
by Eddie Scarry
| October 29, 2018 03:47 PM
President Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric ahead of next week's midterm elections is a major factor that lead to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, according to many in the news media.
After the Saturday shooting left 11 dead and several more injured, journalists and commentators at major news outlets seized on the incident as evidence that Trump had inspired violence.
Much of the reasoning rests on Trump’s repeated targeting of a migrant “caravan†of thousands of Central American people making its way up to the U.S.-Mexico border in order to claim asylum. Trump has called the caravan a potential “invasion†and a “national emergency,†though some high-profile conservatives have suggested it’s a part of a conspiracy funded by liberal philanthropist George Soros, a Holocaust survivor.
The synagogu shooter, identified as 48-year-old Robert Bowers, reportedly yelled “all Jews must die†when he opened fire on the synagogue, and some in the media said that was enough to tie Trump to the incident, despite Trump's support for Israel and his daughter Ivanka's conversion to Judiasm.
“You can draw a direct line from all of the vitriol and hate rhetoric about the caravan that’s some 2,000 miles away from our border and the gunman in Pittsburgh, who referenced that, and somehow turned it into an attack on Jews,†CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota said Monday.
GQ magazine correspondent Julia Ioffe wrote Sunday in the Washington Post that even if Trump is not directly the cause of the shooting or the suspicious packages delivered to high-profile Democrats around the country last week, “the pipe-bomb makers and synagogue shooters and racists who mowed a woman down in Charlottesville were never even looking for Trump’s explicit blessing, because they knew the president had allowed bigots like them to go about their business…â€
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