Despite President Trump’s strong condemnation of the recent synagogue shooting at the Chabad of Poway and anti-Semitism as a whole at a rally Saturday night, ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd blamed Trump for the shooting during Sunday’s This Week on ABC. Dowd went so far as to claim Trump’s rhetoric gave the shooter “permission” to act.
As they were approaching the end of the program, host George Stephanopoulos suggested he saw a “real pattern here. We're seeing it again and again and again. Spread over the internet. Even earlier in the week in Sunnyvale, California, a man drives a car into a crowd he thinks is going to be filled with Muslims. This seems to be contagious.”
In spite of the fact that the driver in the Sunnyvale case was black, Dowd launched into a rant about how “radical white extremism” was on the rise in America and suggested, “it's actually a much bigger problem within America than radical Islam”.
After a quick detour to push gun control, Dowd demanded that President Trump “look in the mirror and understand that the rhetoric, the words he uses in all of this inflame a big part of what’s going on in America, give permission to the most craziest people in America.”
“Not that the President is responsible but his rhetoric adds to that and he needs to reflect on that,” he added.
After View co-host Meghan McCain pointed out the anti-Semitism oozing from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Dowd interjected to end the conversation and program on Trump. Suggesting Trump’s position on immigration was “a big problem”, Dowd linked the Chabad of Poway and Tree of Life shootings to the President:
What I think art of this is, yes, it occurred at a synagogue and, yes, this person individually was anti-Semitic but he also was a person that hated immigrants. And what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue; well that guy was driven by what the Tree of Life synagogue was doing to help refugees and immigrants. And when you relate those two things somebody who is anti-immigrant in California, the anti-immigrant hate and refugee that’s going on in the country, what happened at the Tree of Life, and then you couple that with the President's language it's a big problem.
There was no mention of the anti-Semitic cartoon The New York Times published just days before Saturday’s shooting.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
ABC’s This Week
April 28, 2019
9:55:07 a.m. EasternGEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Matthew Dowd, I was talking about it with Jim Clyburn at the top of the show. A real pattern here. We're seeing it again and again and again. Spread over the internet. Even earlier in the week in Sunnyvale, California, a man drives a car into a crowd he thinks is going to be filled with Muslims. This seems to be contagious.
MATTHEW DOWD: Well, there's all kinds of data that shows over the last few years there's been this huge rise of radical white extremism in America. And it's actually a much bigger problem within America than radical Islam but spend vastly amounts more resources and dollar and manpower and police work related to radical Islam than we do to what's going on in America.
So, first we have it address that problem and this is reflective of that. Second, we have to have a real conversation. This was another example where guns are involved in America and all of these shootings where there's access to guns and what we can do. As a gun owner, I own five guns myself. Most gun owners believe we have to do something about guns.
And three, I think the President needs to at some point look in the mirror and understand that the rhetoric, the words he uses in all of this inflame a big part of what’s going on in America, give permission to the most craziest people in America. Not that the President is responsible but his rhetoric adds to that and he needs to reflect on that. Because the day -- Now that we're having these shootings not only in public places and in concerts and in places where parties are, we're having them in synagogues and mosques and Christian churches.
(…)
DOWD: What I think art of this is, yes, it occurred at a synagogue and, yes, this person individually was anti-Semitic but he also was a person that hated immigrants. And what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue; well that guy was driven by what the Tree of Life synagogue was doing to help refugees and immigrants. And when you relate those two things somebody who is anti-immigrant in California, the anti-immigrant hate and refugee that’s going on in the country, what happened at the Tree of Life, and then you couple that with the President's language it's a big problem.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Continuing conversation.
(…)
