Eleven days after an assassination try towards Donald Trump final 12 months, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in entrance of lawmakers who have been hungry for data.
But he was circumspect. Yes, the shooter focused Trump, however Wray wasn’t going to sit there and speculate or draw inferences about his motive.
A congressman requested Wray, “do you and your team know the motive of the shooter or have any idea what could have driven it?”
Wray responded: “Well, ‘know’ and ‘have any idea’ are two very different things.”
When a Republican requested him if Democrats’ rhetoric performed any position, Wray balked: “Respectfully, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me, as the FBI director, to be characterizing or engaging in public commentary on specific people’s rhetoric.”
That was then; that is now.
In preserving with the second Trump administration’s extraordinary moves to comment on ongoing investigations and politicize them, prime officials leapt this week to connect a mass capturing on the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis that killed two kids and injured greater than a dozen others to the left – each implicitly and explicitly.
They did so even because the recognized image of the shooter Robin Westman’s phrases painted a complicated and often incoherent picture of Westman’s beliefs and potential motives.
Perhaps most hanging of all was Wray’s successor as FBI director, Kash Patel.
While Patel didn’t ascribe a motive to Westman, he cherry-picked a handful of Westman’s words. He mentioned that Westman “left multiple anti-Catholic, anti-religious references,” spoke of “hatred and violence toward Jewish people” and mentioned “Free Palestine,” and wrote “an explicit call for violence against President Trump on a firearm magazine.”
Patel mentioned the crime was being investigated as not simply terrorism, however a “hate crime targeting Catholics.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem echoed Patel, noting Westman wrote “Where is your God?” and “Kill Donald Trump” on her weapons and ammunition.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was extra express about Westman’s motive, saying it was “anti-God sentiment that motivated the shooter.”
What do these issues have in widespread? They occur to align with teams and other people Republicans have set themselves up as defending – and have accused the left of attacking. Along with citing Westman’s references to Trump, the intimation is clearly that this was an assault motivated by leftist ideology.
But the fuller picture of Westman’s words reveals that is a extremely selective studying. It suggests the shooter may have been influenced by a host of extremists with various and even typically right-wing views. Westman expressed hatred in direction of a complete host of teams, together with ones that could possibly be coded as allies of the left.
Westman wrote racial slurs towards Black and Hispanic individuals and an epithet for homosexual individuals, in addition to “Nuke India.” Westman appeared to have a good time anti-Muslim terrorists Anders Breivik from Norway and Brenton Tarrant from New Zealand. Westman cited the circumstances of anti-government, white-supremacist extremists Randy Weaver and Timothy McVeigh and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas – circumstances that grew to become rallying cries on the far proper.
Westman additionally appeared to have a good time those that attacked Christian establishments and Jews. But the widespread thread appears to be the celebration of hatred and massacres of many varieties.
It’s a hodge-podge of potential motivations that counsel an ideology that isn’t neatly pinned down.
Trump administration officials and others have additionally gestured at the truth that Westman was transgender. Patel appeared to make a level to name Westman “the male subject,” regardless of Westman having taken authorized steps to transition and stay as a lady, in accordance to court docket paperwork from 2019 and 2020. Noem mentioned Westman “was a 23 year-old man, claiming to be transgender.”
They weren’t essentially saying that was related, however they have been definitely making a level to say it. And that too fed into right-wing allegations that trans individuals are extra seemingly to commit such atrocities.
There isn’t any evidence supporting that latter claim, although. The notion appears to owe in giant half to individuals falsely claiming earlier mass shooters have been transgender, typically shortly after the shootings. This occurred after college shootings in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 and Madison, Wisconsin final 12 months, amongst others. Even Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. repeated the false claim that the shooters had been transgender.
Conservative media figures, particularly on Fox News, have been completely satisfied to join the dots extra explicitly.
“The left is weaponizing trans kids and turning them into culture warriors, and they’ve been turned loose against the church, schools, and Trump,” Fox host Jesse Watters said Wednesday. “You see it, I see it.”
Added Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida on Fox host Laura Ingraham’s present that night time: “This is about mental health issues that the radical left refuses to acknowledge, comes from their crazy ideology, which is damaging so many children in the United States who are now becoming young adults.”
Ingraham responded: “Mutilating their bodies and their minds.”
Even the concept Westman was essentially concentrating on Catholics seems speculative. Yes, this was an assault on a spiritual college. But it additionally occurs to have been a spiritual college that Westman attended.
And to the extent we’re taking Westman’s phrases at face worth, Westman explicitly mentioned that wasn’t a motivation.
“This is not a church or religion attack, that is not the message,” Westman wrote. “The message is there is no message.”
The episode highlights a sort of rush to judgment has turn out to be particularly widespread on the correct. Trump and his allies have hooked up his would-be murderer, Thomas Matthew Crooks, to the left, regardless of Crooks having been a registered Republican and there still being no solid picture of his motivations. It was a related story with the attack on Paul Pelosi and the shootings of two Minnesota state lawmakers this year.
The lure of attaching these individuals to the opposite facet based mostly on incomplete and often-wrong data is outwardly too tempting.
But often this isn’t carried out with an help from prime administration officials who’re supposed to be circumspect about prejudging a case.