Don’t blame Trump for shooting

On Shabbos, the last day of Pesach, 19-year-old John Earnest of San Diego walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue and opened fire, killing one person and injuring three others. Liberal media and politicians practically tripped over themselves as they rushed to politicize the shooting by blaming it on “right-wing hate sites” and President Trump.

During Brian Stelter’s Sunday show on CNN, the Baltimore Sun’s media critic David Zurawik said: “Look, we’ve always been a violent society. America’s history is founded on violence but the underbelly was generally tamped down. We got some with McCarthy, we got some of it with George Wallace, but this era we’re in with Donald Trump — it’s like the gates of hell have been opened and these people get a pass to come on out and do it in public.”

Another guest, Elaina Plott, White House correspondent for The Atlantic, criticized Trump for not saying anything about the attack. This was not accurate; by the time the show was taped on Sunday morning, the president had made a statement as he walked to Marine One.

He spoke on the issue during his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin: “Tonight, America’s heart is with the victims of the horrific synagogue shooting in Poway, California. Our entire nation mourns the loss of life, prays for the wounded, and stands in solidarity with the Jewish community. We forcefully condemn the evil of anti-Semitism and hate, which must be defeated. Just happened. Must be defeated. And we are grateful to the law-enforcement personnel for their courageous response. Incredible response today by law enforcement. And I especially want to recognize a certain off-duty border patrol agent who bravely returned fire and helped disrupt the attack and saved so many lives … We stand together. We will all get to the bottom of it. We’re going to get to the bottom of a lot of things happening in our country.”

On the politicians’ end, Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) joined the pile-on, saying, “Let us speak that truth and let us speak it in a way where we all agree that these are borne out of hate, hate which has received new fuel in these last two years.”

Both the blaming of Trump and right-wingers are factually incorrect, allowing the murderer off the hook. The only person who should be blamed for the Chabad of Poway shooting is John Earnest, who, just before the attack, posted a manifesto explaining why he didn’t like Trump or conservatives.

In his manifesto, to answer whether he is a Trump supporter, Earnest wrote, “You mean that Zionist, Jew-loving, anti-White, traitorous [obscenity]? Don’t make me laugh.”

And on the question of whether or not he was a conservative, he said, “I am not a useless, spineless coward so no — I am not a conservative. Conservative is a misnomer. They conserve nothing. They’ll complain all they want but they won’t take up arms and threaten their government with death (the only thing that works). Ever heard about the Battle of Athens (1946)?”

The left-wing media is quick to suggest that the president promotes anti-Semitism, although his first UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, fought Jew-hatred in the international organization with an effort not seen since Daniel Patrick Moynihan ripped a proposal equating Zionism with racism into pieces on the General Assembly floor.  

The media also ignores that Trump appointed Ken Marcus to head the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Marcus, who spent much of his career fighting anti-Semitism, was confirmed despite objections from Democrats who didn’t like that he had labeled some anti-Israel incidents as anti-Semitic.

It is indisputable that President Trump is the most pro-Israel president since the creation of modern Israel in 1948. In fact, when liberals criticize Trump’s Israel policies, it’s because they believe they are too pro-Israel.

Blaming Trump for the shooting at Chabad of Poway is wrong. But it is also wrong to blame political Jew-haters — people like Barack Obama, or presidential candidates who rushed to pay tribute to Al Sharpton, or Rep. Omar, or the Democrats who refused to explicitly condemn her — for causing the shooting. It is wrong to blame any of the hate-spewing members of the Democratic Party I’ve been identifying since 2017, or the Congressional Black Caucus’s affinity for Louis Farrakhan, or Rep. Hank Johnson for calling Jews termites in 2016, or the Women’s March, or even the editor of the New York Times international edition, which published an anti-Semitic cartoon two days before the shooting. None of them caused the shooting. 

The only person who can be blamed for the horrible shooting at the Chabad of Poway is the person who pulled the trigger.