Here’s a tweet
from President Trump that was just put out today.
Why
on Earth would Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran provoke an
investigation? There was never the slightest question as to where the
money was originally from. The Shah of Iran had paid for US weapons. The delivery of those weapons was canceled because of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Their $1.7
billion was frozen and released by the nuclear deal of July 2015. Nor
has there been any question that Iran has held up its end of the
deal. President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were not
completely happy with all of the relationship between the US and
Iran, but Tillerson could
not cite any way in which Iran was not keeping the agreement.
This is divisive
because there’s no reason for this complaint beyond just making
trouble and raising unwarranted doubts about the last president.
But what really got
to me was this one.
So the President
says people should report suspicious individuals. Okay. That’s a
reasonable requirement. But this is kind of “victim blaming”
language as it suggests that people who knew the Florida shooter were
slacking off and not alerting authorities.
And, as
it turned out...
On January 5, 2018, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the
FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to report concerns about
him. The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership,
desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media
posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.
The FBI admitted
that the tip really should have been acted on and that it was their
fault that it wasn’t.
Was there another
factor that might have contributed to Nikolas Cruz taking his
legally-acquired
AR-15 to the Parkland school? Well, yes! The fact that it was
legal for him to acquire an AR-15 in the first place!
A little over a month after his inauguration, on Feb. 28, 2017,
President Trump signed HJ Resolution 40, a bill that made it easier
for people with mental illness to obtain guns.
As the president
observed, the shooter demonstrated signs that he was “mentally
disturbed.”
Now, the spokesperson
for the FLOTUS, Melania Trump, said
But this wasn’t a
case of the President being attacked. It’s a case of the Republican
Party passing a bill and the President signing it that contributed to
the shooting in Parkland, FL. It hardly counts as an attack when
people point this out. It’s called “assigning responsibility.”
Did Trump takes responsibility in the manner that the FBI did? Uh,
no.
I think the phrase "Walk and chew gum" applies here. I think the FBI is more than capable of handling their investigation of Trump along with responding to tips.
What gets to me is that there's no admission by Trump that he
engaged in victim-blaming. No admission that he was wrong to say that
people “Must always report such instances to authorities, again and
again!” They DID report! And there was more than one report. Trump
just blames the FBI for a fault that they themselves admitted to.
This is not a
President who will ever accomplish anything good. He’s far too
wrapped up in trying to see to it that he never gets blamed for anything,
even when something is obviously his fault. Signing the bill that
permitted people with mental problems to obtain guns anyway was
clearly something he could have refused to do. It was the fault of
the Republican Party to pass such a bill in the first place, but that
doesn’t absolve Trump in any way. It’s his signature on the bill.
I very seriously do
not believe the US has ever had a more divisive president!
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