Trump Inspiring White Supremacist Terrorists? Well That Could Not Be!
it's your Sunday Show Rundown!
Welcome to the Sunday show roundup; this one is grim.
The Sunday shows dealt with the aftermath of ANOTHER mass shooting that took place in El Paso, Texas (followed byANOTHER in Dayton, Ohio). No other Sunday show guest tried harder to contort into pretzels of blame-shifting than former South Carolina representative, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Acting White House Chief of Staff and professional fuckmook Mick Mulvaney.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," he was confronted by Jonathan Karl with the reality of El Paso at least (and presumably Dayton, and presumably Gilroy) being white nationalist terrorism so obvious even (one) Republican had to say so . And it was instigated and ignored by his oddly silent boss on Sunday. Mulvaney wanted you to LOOK OVER THERE:
MULVANEY: It's a fair question I think to ask. Which is, look, did anyone blame Bernie Sanders for the congressional baseball game shooting? No, I don't think so. Did anyone blame Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the gentleman -- gentleman -- for the crazy guy who tried to blow up the DHS office in Washington state, taking I think a homemade bomb and an AR-15 to shoot up what he called a concentration camp, the exact same rhetoric that AOC was using? Did anybody blame her? Look, there's -- there's no benefit here to trying to make this a political issue. This is a social issue and we need to address it as -- as that.
This is rich coming from Mulvaney. Mere hours after Scalise was shot at that congressional baseball game practice, conservative outlets were blaming Sanders for that shooting and insinuating Sanders was instigating for more. The fact is, Republicans don't try this strategy more often because it would quickly show who really instigates the majority of politically motivated violence and it's NOT Democratic representatives asking for universal background checks. Once again, Mulvaney is ignoring facts and timelines to lie his ass off on Sunday shows ( two weeks in a row! )
Karl quickly steered the conversation back to where it belonged, which is Trump's downplaying or ignoring white nationalist terrorism. That and the inflaming of racism done by his boss by calling asylum seekers "invaders,"telling people of color to"go back where they came from" andspeaking about "infestation" :
MULVANEY: No, I don't believe that's downplaying it. He said...
KARL: I don't really when asked if it's rising.
MULVANEY: Read the last sentence. I don't have it in front of me. This is a small group of people -- finish the sentence, or the tweet -- what did he say?
KARL: I'll read the whole thing again. He was asked directly, do you see today white nationalism as a rising threat around the world? His answer, I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have a very, very serious problem.
After failing miserably to make his point on ABC, Mulvaney moved over to NBC's "Meet The Press" where a technical difficulty made Chuck Todd discuss the shootings before talking to Mulvaney. The panel was making solid points about the shooter's motivations based on his target and manifesto. Eddie Glaude Jr. quickly diagnosed exactly what the issue is:
EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: So it's one thing for people to recognize that we have a white nationalist problem. That's important.
But all this great conversation was interrupted by former governor of North Carolina Pat McCrory, who had to prove that the southern Carolina didn't retain the majority of the stupid:
MCCRORY: I agree with the comment made that I don't think you blame a politician. You blame the person who did it. You know, I blamed Oswald. I blamed Brenner. I blamed James Earl Ray. I blamed Hinkley. I blamed a haunting Charles Whitman, who, when I was a small kid in elementary school, went to a tower and shot students from a tower in Austin, Texas. I didn't blame Lyndon Baines Johnson at the time. But there is no doubt that the president has to come out with a strong statement against, listen, there are some white nationalist nuts and dangerous people out there, including in my state, that need to be called out, radicals, and by the way, Antifa nuts that attacked my car just blocks from here, in a taxicab, during the inauguration, and jumped on my hood with hoods on them. We have to call out radical, left-wing groups and not give them any credibility whatsoever.
Yes, let's blame Antifa with their (checks notes) ZERO murders based on ideology and immigrants/refugees seeking asylum! Thankfully Kasie Hunt and Glaude Jr. were there to point out his absurdity:
MCCRORY: Let me speak. We have a series-- laws on the book against illegal immigration. If we get rid of those laws, why don't we just open up--
GLAUDE.: No human being is illegal.
MCCRORY: Excuse me.
HUNT: With all due respect, that's not what we're talking about.
MCCRORY: He just brought it up.
HUNT: That's not the conversation we're having.
MCCRORY: Good, good.
HUNT: Lyndon Baines Johnson was not out there, when Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, talking about race and giving all kinds of incentives. And I mean, what do you expect the president of the United States to say after something like this happens and leading up to it? I mean, there are clips of him, in Florida, where somebody yelled, at his rally, "Shoot them. Shoot the immigrants." And he said, "Well, maybe you could only get away with that here." I mean, that is a conversation that we are having.
Once the satellite feed was corrected, Mulvaney came on to show his anger and disappointment ... at the panel for discussing how the Trump administration is full of white supremacist sympathizers:
MULVANEY: If a person, if a member of this administration who someone on your panel, I couldn't see their faces, called out today as a white national -- if that person gets injured today, is the person on your panel responsible? I am really really disappointed at the level of rhetoric. Do we have problems in this nation? Absolutely we do. Do we have white supremacists who are crazy and nuts and dangerous? Yes we do. But my goodness, gracious --
After trying (and failing) to continue to separate white nationalist rhetoric by Trump from the white nationalist violence it inspires, Todd returned to the panel to point out the unsual circumstances and to get Glaude's reaction to Mulvaney's umbrage at his assessment.
WATCH: Eddie Glaude Jr. says White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney can't "acknowledge" that shootings in El Paso and Dayton are domestic terrorism because of the shooters' race. @esglaude : "I can give less than a damn what Mick Mulvaeny thinks about what I say." pic.twitter.com/YItQ4zPSnM
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 4, 2019
Well put, Professor Glaude.
Have a week, Wonks! For the rest of you, Kid Mero has something to say:
Some chanclas might also help. That or an ass whooping from my Mom! Giphy
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I can't be the first to comment. If I am fuck that raiders of the lost ark Nazi.
It's too bad #MoscowMitch broke his shoulder.
Thoughts and prayers, motherfucker.