January 24, 2018

Trump Breaks His Glaring Silence on the Kentucky School Shooting

As he offers condolences, the White House blames the problem on “a crime wave”

Dominique Pineiro/ZUMA

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A day after a school shooting killed two teenage students in rural Kentucky and injured 17 others, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders balked at questions regarding President Donald Trump’s silence on the matter more than 24 hours later. She accused a reporter of blaming Trump for being “complicit” in Tuesday’s shooting.

“Let me be clear about this,” Sanders said, when asked by NBC’s Peter Alexander if Trump would publicly discuss the issue of school shootings. “The fact that you are basically accusing the president of being complicit in a school shooting is outrageous.” (Alexander said nothing about Trump “being complicit” in his question to Sanders.)

She also pointed to the administration’s work with the Justice Department to eradicate crime—a tough-on-crime initiative experts have cautioned is based on questionable statistics—as evidence that the White House was indeed pursuing policy to reduce the country’s gun violence. At another turn, Sanders suggested an alleged “crime wave” was the reason for school shootings in America. 

“I’m not accusing the president of anything,” Alexander responded. “I’m concerned about the students in America and want to know what he’s going to do.”

The heated exchange on Wednesday punctuated what had been conspicuous silence on the shooting from Trump, who instead devoted his social media activity on Tuesday to disparaging “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” over immigration negotiations and personally joining in on a continuing smear campaign against the FBI and the Mueller investigation.

Shortly after Wednesday’s press briefing, the president surfaced on Twitter to finally weigh in on the Kentucky shooting and offer his “thoughts and prayers” to the victims’ families:

In response, many on Twitter made note of the National Rifle Association’s unprecedented financial support for Trump’s 2016 campaign for the White House.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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