In the aftermath of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Republicans and conservatives are acting like snowflakes, arguing that the incident means that criticism of President Donald Trump and other Republicans must come to a halt.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche laid out the Trump administration’s argument.
“When you have reporters, when you have media just being overly critical and calling the president horrible names—for no reason and without evidence, without proof—it shouldn’t surprise us that this type of rhetoric takes place,” Blanche said, referring to the manifesto left behind by the alleged shooter.
Blanche did not specify what in particular people have been “overly critical” with in regard to Trump. He didn’t say if the criticism was in response to Trump’s long history of racism or to his anti-immigrant policies that led to the deaths of at least two American citizens.
Or perhaps the acting attorney general believes that people shouldn’t say mean things about Trump after his policies have led to increased deaths both domestically and internationally, including the deaths of children.
He didn’t say.
In a similar vein to Blanche, Republican officials like South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace and Trump’s special envoy Ric Grenell reacted with outrage on the night of the shooting, criticizing actor Ben Stiller for a tweet that said “got it done.” They and other conservative figures in the MAGA world immediately leapt to the conclusion that Stiller was praising the shooter—when, in reality, Stiller was responding to the New York Knicks defeating the Atlanta Hawks.
The right also criticized former President Barack Obama in a bit of messaging amplified by the administration’s allies at Fox News.
Addressing the shooting, Obama wrote in a post on X, “Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy.”
But the right immediately slammed the former president as “SICK” and “clueless” because he did not go into details about the shooter’s motives and perceived ideological leanings.
Beyond this, the right has ludicrously argued that the shooting means Trump deserves a golden ballroom, and blamed the Democratic Party’s purported rhetoric for inspiring a would-be assassin.
Even in a vacuum, the right’s supposed outrage and clear desire to squelch speech and criticism would be strange. But using this argument in defense of Trump is even more bizarre. He has spent nearly his entire time in the public sphere being crass and demeaning to people who have crossed his path. Insults are not just incidental to his character but are at the core of his public persona.
Just a few weeks ago, many of these figures on the right were lining up behind Trump when he threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization. There was little tone-policing from conservatives when Trump said, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
It wasn’t Obama or Stiller who reacted to the death of former special counsel Robert Mueller with glee in March. It was Trump, who wrote on social media, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
When film director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, were killed in December, Trump wrote that it was “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
And back in 2018, Trump complained in the aftermath of the death of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona that McCain “didn’t get the job done” for veterans and that he should have gotten “a thank you” for allowing the use of a military transport to take McCain’s body to Washington, D.C.
This is the person whom the right is now arguing shouldn’t be criticized or called names.
The gala shooting is being used by the right to attack and squelch speech they disagree with—a tactic they have wielded time and time again. For the snowflake right, only their speech should be allowed, and everyone else has to leave them alone.
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