Commentary

Is It Really President Trump’s Fault?

The United States is in collective shock over two mass shootings that happened over the weekend in America. The latest casualty figures I’ve read place the toll at 29 people dead and scores more wounded. 

The Talking Snake Media and the regressive left immediately blew past the tragedy of the decimated families and spent all their energy and air time demonizing President Trump and blaming the carnage on him.  

In their blind hatred for the president, they refuse to face the fact that the shooters and the shooters alone are responsible for these crimes. Even the shooter declared in his manifest that he formed his ideas before the president even ran for office. Besides which, the president did not pull the trigger, the shooters did.  

The president is as innocent of blame as the other 330 million Americans who did not pick up a rifle and go on a shooting rampage on Saturday and Sunday. 

The left blames the shootings on what they perceive to be the president’s unhinged rhetoric. Yet they seem utterly unaware of how unhinged their own rhetoric toward the president is. He is relentlessly demonized as a racist, a xenophobe, a white nationalist, a white supremacist, and a fascist. Comparisons to Hitler are common. Leftists openly reflect on how sweet it would be to stand over his lifeless corpse.  

By their own standards, they will be to blame if someone tries to take the president out. Will they accept the blame? Of course not, any more than they accepted the blame when someone who listens to them tried to assassinate Republican congressmen while they were practicing for a baseball game. Did we hear them flagellating themselves for their own rhetoric when Steve Scalise nearly died from gunshot wounds to his internal organs? 

No, we did not. This just makes them guilty of nauseating hypocrisy and means they should keep their rancid opinions to themselves until they’re prepared to play fair. 

It’s not Trump who relentless spews hatred and vile, it’s the Talking Snake Media and regressive politicians, who seem blind to their own bitter racism. The left has taken to demonizing not only Trump but all white people as inherently racist. (They’ll say we know not every white is racist, but they don’t mean it; they don’t let us, for instance, insist that we are not saying that every illegal is a rapist and a murderer.) They seem intent on persuading white people that they should feel guilty and ashamed, not because of their sin but because of their skin.  

Demonizing 70% of the nation does not seem like the tolerant, compassionate thing to do. Nor does it seem like a smart idea if you’re trying to win a national election. Regressives are in fact the real racists in this mix because they are judging people based on the color of their skin rather than on the content of their character. 

The job of civil government is to restrain evil by using its God-ordained authority to penalize those who break the law. Rulers, Paul says, are to be a “terror” to those who engage in bad conduct (Romans 13:3). As Peter puts it, they are to “punish those who do evil and praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14). 

But the left relentlessly castigates a president who is seeking to that very thing, to restrain evil by securing our borders so that bad people cannot get in. Meanwhile, while the president of Mexico blames America for the death of 3 Mexican nationals in the El Paso shooting, he, along with the left, is utterly silent when American citizens die violently at the hands of illegal alien criminals from his own country. 

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The left not only castigates the president, they actively resist him when he seeks to fulfill his oath of office to see that the laws are faithfully executed. If Democrats can’t stop him, activist judges will, striking down one common-sense immigration policy after another. They are not upholding the law, they are shredding it. 

And every time that happens, another guardrail which keeps our society from plunging into an abyss of moral riot is torn down. Where evil is not resisted, it will advance and become increasingly vile, wicked, and corrupt. And things like Saturday will happen with increasing frequency. 

It’s always wrong for citizens to take the law into their own hands. Except for self-defense, the Scriptures place the entire responsibility to deal with criminal behavior on civil government. It is the responsibility of civil government to protect its citizens by punishing those who violate just laws. If government does not do its job, then the walls and gates that protect our culture from evil crumble.  

And when the government does not restrain evil, people will wrongly decide to step into that vacuum and do it themselves. Vigilante justice is the result of a government that will not enforce the law. If you’re looking for someone to blame, start by looking at those who keep the president from punishing those who break our laws. 

Shooters who are taken into custody should face a speedy and fair trial followed swiftly by an execution so that everyone sees the value we place on human life. When we execute cold-blooded murderers like this we send the message that human life is so precious, so valuable, that if someone takes a human life without cause he must pay for it with his own. 

There are also Second Amendment issues that must be addressed. The regressive solution to mass shootings is always the same. Rather than find a way to protect the right of innocent Americans to defend themselves, they work to strip of them of that right, which leaves them defenseless against the only guy in the room with a gun. The problem in El Paso and Dayton was not that there were too many guns but too few. No one was in a position to shoot back. 

Madonna recently released a song about our cultural depravity with the repeated lyric “We lost God control.” She’s right. Former Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop said, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”  

Bottom line: If this nation does not turn back to God, and rely again on “God control,” there aren’t enough bayonets in the world to keep us safe.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics. Described by the New York Times as a "talk-radio natural," he hosts the "Focal Point" radio program on AFR Talk,which airs live on weekdays from 1-3 p.m. Central on American Family Radio's nationwide talk network of 125 stations. A graduate of Stanford University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Bryan pastored in Idaho for 25 years, during which time he served for one session as the chaplain of the Idaho state senate. He founded the Idaho Values Alliance in 2005, and is a co-author of Idaho's marriage amendment. He has been with AFA since 2009. In his role as a spokesman for AFA, he has been featured on media outlets such as Fox News, CBS News, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Russia Today television and the Associated Press, has been a frequent guest on talk radio to discuss cultural and religious issues. He has been profiled in publications such as the New York Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker, and BuzzFeed. He has been married to his bride, Debbie, since 1976, and they have two grown children.

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