MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart brought on the media's favorite youthful gun-grabber David Hogg on Sunday. Hogg insisted Highland Park shooting suspect Robert Crimo III is a white nationalist. Who is not mentally ill.
And people in minority communities don't get the mental-health assistance they need for PTSD from shootings . . . because of redlining.
DAVID HOGG: Hatred is not a mental illness. I can't stand it when there are these terrorist attacks that are happening across the United States by these white nationalists, and we repeatedly act like hatred is a mental illness. Racism is not a mental illness. Racism is learned. Hatred is learned.
Our country needs to realize that mental illness does have a role in addressing gun deaths. That's only regards to the two-thirds of gun deaths that are suicides. What's not going to help to reduce gun death is stigmatizing it, and making people think that the only time we should be talking about mental illness is when there's a white-nationalist mass shooter that goes and kills people, like the 17 students and educators the white nationalist last year at my high school killed.
Last year? The Parkland shooting happened more than four years ago. In case anyone forgot, the shooter was Nikolas Cruz, a Latino. Even Snopes ruled the white-nationalist claims about Cruz were "Unproven."
As for Crimo being a white nationalist, the only information that's been made public to date is this statement by the spokesman for the law-enforcement agency in charge of the investigation in Highland Park:
"We have no information to suggest at this point it was racially motivated, motivated by religion or any other protected status."
Hogg and Capehart criticized Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell's statement on the Highland Park shootings, in which he said:
"I think yesterday's shooting is another example of what the problem is. The problem is mental health."
We're certainly not suggesting that Crimo has a valid mental-illness defense to the crimes of which he's accused. But based on the facts made public to date, including the array of photographs seen here, is it unreasonable to imagine that he is significantly disturbed?
Capehart was all in with Hogg's reasoning, complimenting his "excellent point" about mental illness only being mentioned in regard to white-nationalist shooters, and wondering what it was going to take to get McConnell and the Republicans to "hear" Hogg on the matter?
Finally, Hogg served up this word salad about redlining and treatment for PTSD in minority communities:
"We do need to have a conversation around mental health in this country to fund, to address, especially, the trauma and PTSD that black and brown communities have from experiencing a disproportionate about of gun violence . . . They don't get their assistance support like kids in Parkland did. Because they aren't, they are disproportionately not white, and they don't have a community with the resources that Parkland does. Not because they chose that, but because it was built that way through successive injustice in the history of our country. With issues like redlining, and, other forms of that injustice."
Why do liberals always want to have "conversations around" issues? Anyhow, bonus woke points to Hogg for working redlining into his spiel.
The latest display of David Hogg's er, expertise was sponsored in part by Progressive, Colonial Penn, Intel, and Dell.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart
7/10/22
10:20 am EDTDAVID HOGG: Hatred is not a mental illness. I can't stand it when there are these terrorist attacks that are happening across the United States by these white nationalists, and we repeatedly act like hatred is a mental illness. Racism is not a mental illness. Racism is learned. Hatred is learned.
Our country needs to realize that mental illness does have a role in addressing gun deaths. That's only regards to the two-thirds of gun deaths that are suicides. What's not going to help to reduce gun death is stigmatizing it, and making people think that the only time we should be talking about mental illness is when there's a white-nationalist mass shooter that goes and kills people, like the 17 students and educators the white nationalist last year at my high school killed.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: And that is, that is an excellent point, and dovetails nicely to the next question I was going to ask you. Because you do have Republican leaders, most notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, who in the wake of Highland Park said, "I think yesterday's shooting is another example of what the problem is. The problem is mental health. And these young men who seem to be inspired to commit these atrocities."
What is going to take, David, to get Republicans, and Republican leaders like McConnell, to hear the words that you just said in response to my previous question?
HOGG: Well, look, here's the reality. You know, it's interesting to note that while these are terrorist attacks, it's only when they are white terrorists that we call them mentally ill in the first place.
And, the fact that we do need to have a conversation around mental health in this country to fund, to address, especially, the trauma and PTSD that black and brown communities have from experiencing a disproportionate about of gun violence that does not get addressed in our country on a daily basis.
What effect, if you want to talk about mental illness, what about the fact that there are children who have to walk to school every day around pools of blood and chalk marks around where bodies were? And they don't get on the news. They don't get their assistance support like kids in Parkland did. Because they aren't, they are disproportionately not white, and they don't have a community with the resources that Parkland does. Not because they chose that, but because it was built that way through successive injustice in the history of our country. With issues like redlining, and, other forms of that injustice.
CAPEHART: David Hogg, cofounder of March for our Lives. As always, thank you very much for coming to the Sunday show.
HOGG: Thank you.
