President Trump condemned this weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in a speech from the White House on Monday morning. He uttered a phrase many of his critics had been waiting for: “white supremacy.” But the speech wasn’t good enough, as you quickly discovered by watching CNN. The virtual panel that analyzed Trump’s statements was still busy discussing how his rhetoric allegedly motivated the shooter to pull the trigger, including the CNN anchors who moderated. Take Poppy Harlow, for starters. She connected the alleged El Paso shooter’s hateful manifesto to President Trump.
“One thing that has changed is that the highest office in the land has apparently decided it’s OK to call people from other countries invaders,” she noted.
In fact, it seems the entire web was impressed.
Chyron. photo: twitter.com/d6CAVpe2un
— Courtney O’Brien (@obrienc2) August 5, 2019
David Urban, a former senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, was offended by Harlow’s conclusion.
“It’s not fair,” he said, before offering a comparison.
Urban challenged Harlow to consider the shooting during a congressional baseball practice in the summer of June 2017. The gunman who fired into a field full of Republicans that day, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), was reportedly motivated by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the mainstream media. He hated Trump. Look, even CNN I covered it. But there was “no outcry against” the TV personalities and progressives who fueled it, Urban noted. Instead of responding to Urban’s argument, Harlow went directly to Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL).
Harlow happily let Gutierrez speak for two uninterrupted minutes, making comments like, “The Republican Party is owned by the NRA,” and Trump “doesn’t care about the people dying in Chicago from gun violence.”
Urban balked again, but then came Harlow’s co-host Jim Sciutto. He noted that Republicans are often motivated by their NRA ratings. And if that number isn’t impressive enough, they’re put in primaries.
“That’s a fact,” Sciutto said.
