Donald Trump’s “thoughts and prayers” remark blows up in his face
Yesterday a shooter opened fire at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. As mainstream Americans have become more outraged about these kinds of shootings, and the demand for common sense gun control has reached critical mass, there has been an increasing backlash against politicians who simply offer their “thoughts and prayers” while refusing to do anything about gun violence. Apparently, Donald Trump didn’t get the memo.
Hours after the YouTube shooting took place, Trump tweeted this: “Was just briefed on the shooting at YouTube’s HQ in San Bruno, California. Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved. Thank you to our phenomenal Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders that are currently on the scene.” This tweet would be one thing if Trump were willing to use his power in office to try to do something about these kinds of shootings. But after spending the past month providing lip service regarding the Stoneman Douglas shooting, it’s become clear that Trump is far too much of an NRA puppet to do anything about gun control.
Suffice it to say that the responses to Trump’s tweet were less than charitable. Jon Pavlovitz responded to the tweet with “Your “thoughts and prayers” may as well be bullets in the next mass shooting — you NRA shill.” Derenic Bird responded by pointing out that you wouldn’t simply offer “thoughts and prayers” to a drowning man while refusing to throw him an available life preserver. Denver Mike took a different tack, asserting that Trump “obviously didn’t write this tweet. Note the lack of exclamation points.” Come to think of it, he has a point.
While Donald Trump’s “thoughts and prayers” tweet ended up blowing up in his face, it was his only non-berserk tweet of the day. His other Twitter posts on Tuesday were along the lines of “Little Jeff Zuker, whose job is in jeopardy, is not having much fun lately” and “Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer” and “sick and biased AGENDA.” While he spelled “borne” and “Zuker” wrong, at least he spelled “AGENDA” correctly.
