Trump's Responsibility for El Paso Massacre

      President Trump's perfunctory denunciation of "racism, bigotry, and white supremacy" after a young white supremacist's massacre of Mexicans in El Paso would have been too little, too late even if it had been believably sincere. But Trump's frozen features as he read prepared remarks from a teleprompter [August 5] made clear to everyone, white supremacists included, that he was merely going through the motions.
      Trump has been guilty of racist conduct from his earliest days in the family business, as seen in the settled fair housing discrimination case in the early 1970s. Moreover, he has used racist rhetoric from his first days as presidential candidate and, after his election, as president to hold and rally his political base--as, for example, in calling for three black, natural-born U.S. citizen members of Congress to go back to where they came from.
      With his re-election campaign under way, Trump now can ill afford to alienate any part of his political base, including those who make no secret of the racist views that motivate their anti-immigrant outbursts. Trump regularly promotes these views at his political rallies, as documented in a compilation by USA Today. The newspaper found that in 64 rallies since 2017, Trump had referred to Central American and Mexican migrants at least 500 times in "incendiary terms," such as "invasion," "animal," and "killer."
      Admittedly, Trump's reckless encouragement of anti-immigrant sentiment would not qualify as legal incitement for Patrick Crusius's deadly shooting spree in predominantly Hispanic El Paso [August 3]. But the president bears a degree of moral responsibility for propagating and normalizing the kind of anti-immigrant views that turned the young community college student into a vigilante taking up arms against what the white supremacist fringe calls "white replacement."
      In fact, Crusius aped Trump's terminology in what is believed to be his online posting before the shooting that he was trying to stop "the Hispanic invasion of Texas." That description of present-day immigration from south of the border can come from no other source than Trump: in three decades of sharp debates about immigration policy in the United States, anti-immigration politicians and advocacy groups had never before couched the issues in terms such as those Trump has used.
      Trump sought to absolve himself of any responsibility, legal or moral, by blaming Crusius' crime on mental illness, the favored explanation from the gun lobby and their supporters for mass shootings. With no psychological training nor any evident ability in self-analysis, Trump is peculiarly unqualified to diagnose Crusius at a distance. Indeed, mental health experts quoted in news coverage appeared to agree that Crusius showed no symptoms of diagnosable mental illness.
      As for policies to address mass shootings, Trump used his prepared remarks to bat away the natural thought that perhaps guns are to blame. "Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun," he recited. Statistics cited by the CNBC journalist John Harwood on Twitter suggest otherwise. Of the 40 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1949, 26 have occurred in the 15 years since the Republican-controlled Congress allowed the assault weapons ban enacted in 1994 to expire in 2004: only two during the decade when the assault weapons ban was on the books.
      With public opinion coalescing around some kind of legislative response, Trump appeared at week's end to be accepting some form of stronger background checks for gun purchasers. Even if enacted, stronger background checks might do very little to prevent the next mass shooting. Apart from a higher minimum-age requirement, Crusius seemingly had nothing that he would have needed to list on an application that would have disqualified him from purchasing an otherwise legal weapon.
      Trump went so as to claim credit for the yet-unenacted proposals to keep guns away from or take guns away from people who pose dangers to themselves or others. "“I think we’re going to come up with something, something really good, beyond what’s done so far," he remarked, referring to background checks or so-called red flag laws.
      As for an assault weapons ban, however, Trump saw no prospects. " “I can tell you is there is no political appetite for that at this moment," he told the White House press pool in unscripted remarks on Wednesday [August 7].
      The week ended with Trump reportedly resentful of the less-than-glowing reviews he received for his visit to El Paso, highlighted by the stinging criticism of his mugging for the cameras as Melania held an infant orphaned by the killing of his two parents in the massacre. As a reminder, President Obama showed more presidential leadership seven years ago after the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut. He was somber and respectful at a vigil two days later and, four years later, was shown in photographs to be tearing up as he talked about the episode.
      Racism and violence have been inherent in Trumpism from the start of his preposterous claim to make America great again. Note that the crime Trump claimed during his campaign he could commit with legal and political impunity was itself a gun crime: shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City. One step to try to prevent the next mass shooting would be at the least a change in presidential rhetoric or, better, a change in the presidency itself. For that, it appears a country in grief must wait yet another year.