Donald Trump's Silence About the London Mosque Attack Speaks Volumes

By Rafi Schwartz  |  June 20, 2017 | 1:03pm
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In the wake of the horrific terrorist attack against Muslims outside a mosque in North London, the public has been forced to grapple with a number of tough questions. Among them: Who is Darren Osborne, the 47-year-old suspected of driving his van into a crowd of Muslim men? Where was he radicalized? And, in the wake of this obvious act of terrorism against one of the United States’ closest allies, where the hell is President Donald Trump?

While the White House issued an excruciatingly bland statement condemning the London mosque attack (delivered during an off-camera, no-audio-allowed press briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer) president Trump has yet to personally address the incident himself. No tweets, no remarks, nothing.

His silence comes in direct contrast to his comments following the terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert Manchester last month—an attack he decried as having been perpetrated by “evil losers.” And it comes in contrast too, to his comments following the terrorist attack on London Bridge earlier this month, to which he tweeted: “WE ARE WITH YOU.”

So why hasn’t the president—who infamously lectured the Muslim community on their supposed responsibilities in the face of global terrorism—responded to this latest act of terror? Does he not know, perhaps, that in the chaotic aftermath of the mosque attack, it was the local imam who rushed to defend the very terrorist who’d targeted them from a furious crowd so that police could detain the man without incident? Or does he simply not care?

The pattern seems painfully clear: To Trump, terrorism is a one-way street, emanating from the Muslim community and toward everyone else. It is as if he is constitutionally incapable of accepting that people with the same color skin as he has could, in fact, perpetrate the very acts of violence he’s so fond of blaming on “others.”

Why hasn’t Donald Trump personally condemned the London mosque attack? I think we all know the answer to that.

 
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