‘After past tragedies, the president has been wary of arriving too quickly for fear of diverting resources from the local investigations…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a scurry to point fingers and deflect blame, liberal groups found themselves delivering mixed messages after the horrific murder of 11 people by an anti-Semitic extremist at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday.
In addition to glossing over their own troubled relationship with anti-Semitism, Democrats savaged President Donald Trump for issuing precisely the same type of response they had heaped effusive praise on former President Barack Obama for in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting.
Following months of brushing aside anti-Semitism within their own ranks— including Twitter giving Louis Farrakhan a pass on hateful remarks and left-wing leaders openly associating with the Nation of Islam leader—the Left’s efforts to bring Jewish voters back into the fold by evoking Nazi fearmongering already had begun on Friday, before the synagogue shooting.
In what seemed like a non-sequitur at the time, Alexander Soros, the son of pipe bomb “victim” George Soros (who has frequently been a supporter and benefactor of violent mob demonstrations) was already levying charges of anti-Semitism related to Trump’s criticisms of the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs, accusing him of using “dog whistle language” for opposing “global special interests.”
Trump, at his rallies, meanwhile, continued to tout the many ways he had supported the Jewish community—gushing with pride at an event Friday in Charlotte, N.C., over his successes in building a brand-new embassy in the Israeli capital and Jewish holy city of Jerusalem.
The former builder spent considerable time at the Friday rally beaming over the successes in the embassy’s construction process, including the use of local materials like Jerusalem stone.
But as news broke of the Pittsburgh shooting, left-wing opportunists saw their opening to link the president to it. The Huffington Post quoted a progressive activist group, Bend the Arc, which refers to itself as the “Jewish Resistance,” effectively dis-inviting Trump from visiting Pittsburgh before the president even released details about his plans to go.
Meanwhile, others in the liberal media, including the Associated Press, criticized him for not clearing his schedule of commitments to go immediately to Pittsburgh.
“[F]aced with another national tragedy, he did not long turn his focus away from the midterm elections or himself,” said AP editorialist-reporter Catherine Lucey.
Although many noted that Trump sharply condemned the “evil, anti-Semitic attack,” repeatedly expressed his sympathy to victims and families of the shootings throughout the day, and promised swift and severe justice for the alleged perpetrator, it was not enough to placate disingenuous politicos and journalists seeking a smear to any cost.
The irony was especially pronounced given the media’s rush only three years ago to lay cover for Obama, who following the shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, S.C., decided his priority was to do a humorous podcast and then attend several fundraising events with big California donors, including one at the San Francisco home of billionaire Tom Steyer.
“Time and again, Obama has carried on business as usual — with only brief interruptions — in the face of crisis or tragedy,” The Washington Post dotingly wrote at the time. “He often makes a statement to the public , as he did Thursday at the White House, speaking emotionally about the Charleston killings, but soon resumes his regularly scheduled programming.”
It went on to explain that Obama, respectfully, didn’t want to get in the way of authorities. “After past tragedies, the president has been wary of arriving too quickly for fear of diverting resources from the local investigations.”
The Charleston massacre, by 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof, came a mere week after Trump had announced his candidacy for president. Although the alleged second coming of Hitler had hardly hit the campaign trail, already racial tensions were peaking amid violent riots in cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Dallas and Baton Rouge, all of which Obama’s divisive rhetoric helped to exacerbate.
Polls by major outlets, including Rasmussen, CNN and The New York Times/CBS revealed strong public perceptions that race relations worsened considerably under Obama, with some indicating that they had reached an all-time low. By contrast, the strong economy and record unemployment have helped improve voter perceptions of race relations under Trump.
The Democrats, in response to the Charleston shooting, waged an all-out war on Confederate symbols and statues—including those in Charlottesville, Virginia, which in turn triggered yet another violent protest, organized by a former Obama supporter, in April 2017.
Although Antifa protestors responded to the presence of demonstrators wearing Nazi and KKK regalia by hurling bricks and newspaper racks, and using homemade flamethrowers, Trump was roundly criticized for pinning blame for the violence on both sides.
Unsurprisingly, forgetting that past is prologue, leftist fearmongers, including Steyer, found ways of pinning the most recent violence on Trump’s campaign speeches.
“There’s something much bigger than [the synagogue shooting] going on here,” Steyer said, “which is the atmosphere that he’s created and that the Republican Party has created in terms of political violence.”