Senator and 2020 hopeful Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) attacked President Trump this Sunday, saying that the president’s rhetoric aids people like the New Zealand shooter.
“I don’t think you can actually take each of the murderous acts and say what role Donald Trump played, but I can tell you this: his rhetoric doesn’t help,” said Klobuchar on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And many of these people, whether it was the person who tried to bomb Barack Obama or this murderer in New Zealand, have cited Donald Trump along the way.”
That means to me, at the very least, he is dividing people.” added Klobuchar. “They are using him as an excuse.”
Klobuchar instead feels that the President and others should be doing more to push back against hatred.
“He, at the very least, should be giving strong statements, public speeches, defending Muslims in this world,” said Klobuchar.
Trump has refused to say that white nationalism is a growing threat, even downplaying the situation in the wake of the Christchurch shooting that left 49 Muslims dead.
“I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess,” said President Trump. “If you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case, I don’t know enough about it yet. They’re just learning about the person and the people involved. But it’s certainly a terrible thing.”
Experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC based think-tank, disagreed, saying, “the number of terrorist attacks (in the US) by far-right perpetrators rose over the past decade, more than quadrupling between 2016 and 2017.”
The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have also reported a major increase in white nationalism.
Klobuchar also pushed back at recently attacks my President Trump against John McCain, and mentioned the late senator while discussing Trump’s lack of response over New Zealand.
“John believed, as I believe, that when a tragedy happens like in New Zealand, you do all you can to reach out to that country and you do all you can to stand up for the simple belief that people are different in our country, but we were all part of a greater America,” said Klobuchar.
Image via screen capture from video source.