Which This Week analyst used the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida as an excuse to slam religious conservative? It wasn't liberal host George Stephanopoulos. Instead, Matt Dowd on Sunday said this: "We want to be a Christian nation and we want to act in a Christian manner, but, oh, by the way, we don't believe in turn the other cheek."
The former George W. Bush pollster mocked, "And we don't believe in love your enemy. And we believe in loading, loading citizens and basically give them an opportunity to shoot people." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Dowd, who often appears on ABC's Good Morning America to provide supposedly thoughtful analysis, complained that states which have strong gun rights laws, such as Florida, "are also the same states and the same legislatures and the same governors who sort of push for prayer in the school. To me, there's such an irony here."
Terry Moran, a co-anchor of Nightline, appeared on the This Week panel to trash Florida's Stand Your Ground law. He fumed, "It sabotaged our justice system...The Florida law destroys that American system."
The liberal cliches continued. Regarding the shooting of the teenager, another ABC veteran and panel member, Cokie Roberts, blamed the Second Amendment: "And this is where the problem with guns comes...I'm saying the gun is the problem. That's what kills you."
A partial transcript of the segment, which aired at 10:30am EDT, follows:
COKIE ROBERTS: And this is where the problem with guns comes, because if you just- are a person who's a little off and has some false sense of power, that's one thing if you don't have a gun in your hand.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet, he carried all the proper permits.
ROBERTS: Listen I'm not saying it was a legal gun. I'm saying the gun is the problem. That's what kills you.
TERRY MORAN: And the law. And the law in Florida does something else that no other state has a law like this. Not only is stand your ground law, in the olden days under common law, you had the duty to retreat. Stand your ground says no, you don't have to. Florida goes one step farther. Stand your ground is self-defense. Self-defense. Defense, at trial, it would go to trial. In Florida, the law says if you raise a claim of self-defense after killing someone in public, you can't even be arrested unless the police-
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's exactly right. Section 776. Listen to this: "Provides immunity from arrest unless the police have probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful."
MORAN: It's why prosecutors and police hated this law. It sabotaged our justice system. In all of the discussion we heard, what did Zimmerman do? What did Trayvon do? Juries are supposed to figure that out. The Florida law destroys that American system.MATT DOWD: To me, what's ironic to me,- such irony about this is most of the states that have passed this, including Florida and the stand your ground laws and the expanded, obviously, gun, ownership laws, where you can carry concealed weapons, are also the same states and the same legislatures and the same governors who sort of push for prayer in the school. To me, there's such an irony here.
ROBERTS: [Laughs] We need to pray more with all those guns out there.
DOWD: We want to be a Christian nation and we want to act in a Christian manner, but, oh, by the way, we don't believe in turn the other cheek. And we don't believe in love your enemy. And we believe in loading, loading citizens and basically give them an opportunity to shoot people. This is an unbelievable, to me, tragic, tragic case. But I think as Donna said, I think it touched something in society. I hope what doesn't happen, I hope that the rhetoric drops a little bit and that we don't go from what we had two weeks ago, which was everybody was saying there was a war on women and now everybody's saying, certain leaders are starting to say there's a war on African-Americans or a war on blacks. That's not what this is about. Really, that's fundamental. This is about somebody- this about, best case you could say, he's mentally off, George Zimmerman. And that's what I think, we got to go back to what this is really saying about society. This is an individual who did this. This isn't a commentary.
