According to Kellyanne Conway, the Congressional baseball shooting on Wednesday would not have happened if the media had just kissed Donald Trump’s ass.
James Hodgkinson shot and wounded a pair of Republican lawmakers that day. They were practicing in preparation for the annual Congressional baseball game.
Except that this time, conservatives have not been blaming the victims for not carrying guns for self-defense. And they haven’t been defending the gunman as if he did something good. This time, the shooting wounded two of their own, so they responded by politicizing it in order to blame Democrats and Donald Trump’s critics.
And that’s exactly what Kellyanne Conway did on Friday morning during an appearance on Fox & Friends.
Conway not only suggested that negative media coverage of Trump was to blame for the shooting, she claimed that liberals would cheer on Twitter if she were shot and killed.
“I went back and looked at exactly what was being discussed on all the TV shows, except yours, at 7:09 a.m. on Wednesday, when this happened, and it’s a really curious exercise, because as Steve Scalise was fighting for his life and crawling into right field in a trail of blood, you should go back and see what people were saying about the president and Republicans at that very moment,” Conway whined. “Of course, they had to break in with the news of this tragedy, and since then there’s been some introspection — some quieter, more muted voices toning down the rhetoric. But look at Twitter. If I was shot and killed tomorrow, half of Twitter would explode in applause and excitement — this is the world we live in now.”
Here’s the video via YouTube.
For some reason, conservatives such as Conway are pretending that this is the first mass shooting that has ever taken place on American soil. For years, conservatives have been claiming that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was fake. They cheered when a shooter killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. And every time a new mass shooting occurs, conservatives go on the attack in defense of gun rights by saying that now is not the time to talk about it.
Conservatives are also pretending that this is the first instance of political violence in this country. Let’s not forget that conservatives repeatedly threatened President Obama and his family for eight years. Trump supporters even threatened Hillary Clinton during the campaign and committed violent acts against protesters.
And the fact is that the media is not to blame. The only one to blame here is the shooter and whatever policy allowed him to get his hands on a gun in the first place. Clearly, this man was mentally disturbed and should not have been allowed access to guns. Despite this, Congress and Trump are still giving mentally ill people the ability to get guns.
Just because the media criticizes Donald Trump and refuses to be his personal propaganda machine like Fox & Friends does not make them culpable for this shooting. If anything, Conway is making the media a target of any right-wing nutjob who decides to retaliate. And when that happens, you can bet that Conway will be cheering.
Featured image via screenshot
