Horror in Vegas
by digby
I was watching the news last night when the first reports came through. Hoping against hope that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed to be I watched it unfold over the course of several hours. When I finally went to bed we knew that 20 people had died and 100 had been injured. Now it’s 58 dead and more than 500 injured. They were sitting ducks, out in the open. They ran for their lives.
And I saw this come over my twitter feed:
In the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist recklessly blamed the violence on a “coordinated Muslim terror attack,” citing no evidence beyond anonymous “sources.”
As news of the shooting broke on social media, Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative commentator who regularly opened for then-presidential candidate Donald Trumpbefore his rallies in Las Vegas, tweeted that “sources on scene” and “credible news sources” told him the shooting was a “coordinated Muslim terror attack.”
Root authored a book titled “Angry White Male.” While opening for Trump during a rally in October of last year, he threatened violence against Trump’s political opponents. From NBC:Opening for the Republican nominee, Root threatened the political elite, saying he and his fellow “Trump warriors” or members of the “Trump army” — a “citizen revolution” led by “conservatives, angry Republicans who hate establishment RINOS” (Republicans In Name Only).He added, “Independents, working class Americans, Christians, gun owners, small business owners, military veterans and tax payers” — were going to violently take Washington D.C. with “pitchforks, jack hammers and blow torches.”
“We’re coming to tear it down. We’re coming to rip it up. We’re coming to kick your ass. And we’re coming to put you in prison,” [Root] said.
Root’s column is published twice weekly by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is owned by billionaire Trump donor Sheldon Adelson.
He’s still saying that it’s a Muslim attack, some kind of coordinated attack because ISIS claimed responsibility. (They claim responsibility for any mass killing for obvious reasons.)
Trump spoke robotically and tweeted a tweet. He had nothing to say because you can’t blame the victims for being unarmed or cowardly as he usually does because they were mowed down by someone spraying them with automatic gunfire from the 32nd floor.
More guns can’t solve this one. So he, and the rest of the Republicans, have nothing to say.
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