Sunday shows
Steve Scalise says Trump isn't any more responsible for the El Paso shooting than Bernie Sanders was for his
There was some disagreement on Sunday's edition of CBS's Face the Nation over whether President Trump bears some of the responsibility for last weekend's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.
House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was severely wounded in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, said that it's a "slippery slope" to blame Trump for the violence in El Paso. The 21-year-old gunman in El Paso reportedly confessed to targeting Mexicans during the attack, and police believe that he wrote a racist online manifesto, which spoke of a Hispanic "invasion" of Texas. Trump has used similar rhetoric in the past.
Scalise said that the there is "no place" for attacking people based on their ethnicity, but that Trump was no more responsible for the shooting than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was responsible for Scalise's injuries, referring to the fact that the Alexandria gunman volunteered for Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign.
Sanders actually followed Scalise on the program, where he told host Margaret Brennan that Trump's "racist rhetoric" created a "climate" which is fostering hate crimes. He did clarify, however, that he "absolutely" does not think that Trump wants to see people get shot. Tim O'Donnell