Over thirty Americans lie dead from the weekend’s carnage, dozens more are in hospitals, and our tone deaf titular leader just keeps doubling down on his absurd rhetoric, insisting he’s blameless and it’s all the other guys’ fault. No change at all in his philosophies after the twin massacres, except that now his anti-immigrant dogma plays out as even more particularly vicious than before the tragedies occurred in Dayton and El Paso. Washington Post:
…Trump dismissed critics who have suggested that his rhetoric on race and immigration is partly to blame for a rise in hate-inspired violence such as that in El Paso.
“I think my rhetoric brings people together,” Trump said, adding that he is “concerned about the rise of any group of hate.”
He thinks it brings people together? This is why the Mayor of Dayton vowed that she would give Trump a piece of her mind, and the Representative from El Paso said that she would not meet with Trump when he visited. Oh, yes, Trump’s rhetoric is a unifying force, absolutely. What a fool believes, he sees, as the song goes.
There are layers of tragedy to what happened this weekend. Primarily, the death and injury of all those people and the trauma to those communities is paramount. Working down from that, however, is another level of tragedy. Trump has learned nothing — because he is unteachable. He cannot learn. He has rationalized any criticism of himself as being done by “people who are looking for political gain” and “some of them are running for president.”
Then he went on this morning, to talk in hedonistic terms, if you can believe that, about how America is to go forward from here. When asked about banning assault weapons, Trump said, “There’s no political appetite for that at this moment. You can do your own polling, but there’s no political appetite for that.” A lot of polling has already been done.
A July NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll found 57 percent of the public supported a ban on “the sale of semi-automatic assault guns, such as the AK-47 or the AR-15.” Fewer than 3 in 10 Republicans supported the proposal, rising to a slight majority of independents and over 8 in 10 Democrats.
Take a longer look at his breezy remarks. He’s talking about “polling” and “appetite” and there is ZERO conversation about death and avoiding future tragedies. It’s all a game show to him. You figure out what will be popular, and with whom, and change the show to please the audience. Once again, Trump underscores that he is utterly lacking in depth and substance. He’s framing this toxic social issue of gun control in marketing terms, because that’s the limit his intellect can soar to.
It’s all about “appetite.” Trump spoke of there being an “appetite for background checks.” So what does that mean? That critical analysis has been thrown to the wind? Apparently. Screw empirical evidence or expert testimony, Donald Trump is once again going with his gut and now he’s gauging appetites. “There’s a great appetite for seeing that mentally unstable, seriously ill aren’t carrying guns. I have never seen the appetite as strong as it is now. I have not seen it with regards to certain types of weapons.” That’s how it now. Legislation will be gauged on “appetites” and the greatest craving will be fed — or something. Maybe the political scientists can distill this into something comprehensible, I know I can’t.
If you didn’t hear this blithering idiocy this morning, here it is.
Fuck him and the “political appetite”. We’re talking about the hateful murder of innocent Hispanic people by a white supremacist POS who was egged on by Trump’s rhetoric.
What you said is how any normal minded adult sees the issue. Trump is not a normal minded adult. He is a game show host. He sees all of this as a game, leading to the goal of how popular he is and how much money he makes. There are no other considerations for him. He completely lacks empathy and compassion, let alone social conscience.
Oh, yes, right and wrong are determined by what the majority answers to polls. Yeesh!
The real “polls” he’s interested in, are the ones that determine how much money the NRA is going to give the GOP. That’s what this is about.
tRump eggs on his racist ugly base, encouraging violence, and then rushes to the scene of a tragedy ready to pose for a photo op. That’s all this is to him. Another photo-op, another chance to whine through his nose, another day to apply lipstick to his piggy lips and hope we don’t notice what a pig he is.