With the alleged shooter in Tuesday’s the massacre at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis having been transgender and filled with anti-Christian and anti-Semitic views plus calls for President Trump to be assassinated, the liberal media have stuck to their usual patterns with ABC calling for mass gun control and CNN ironically also smearing Christians for praying.
During the second ABC News Special Report about the massacre, chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce grew emotional on the verge of tears as she attacked President Trump and anyone who’s stood in the way of “meaningfully address[ing]” “gun reform,” seemingly ignoring the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act they celebrated at the time.
Bruce — who was the Biden administration’s chief apple polisher — dropped any pretense of facts when she seemed on the verge of sobbing when she smeared Trump for focusing on crime in Washington D.C. but not demanding “gun reform” (i.e. European-style gun control);
Later, her colleague Pierre Thomas wondered what Americans “are...prepared to do” to (somehow) end mass shootings:
Over on CNN, weekday Inside Politics host Dana Bash praised far-left Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — who’s in a reelection fight against a Somali-American who’s running to his left — for denouncing prayer during the first press conference about the attack:
Moments later, she doubled down:
How many times have we seen this cycle — this horrible cycle of the — the trauma, the tragedy? I mean, you mentioned that the whole nation. I — I had to send a note to my brother to say my niece and nephew, who are nine and ten, don’t watch the show today because I don’t want them to be traumatized. They’ll hear about it and — and parents are dealing with this all across the country. And of course, the most important, the parents that were thinking of the most are those who have either lost those two children or those who have their children and in the operating room right now. But when is enough going to be enough?
Liberal CNN religious commentator Father Edward Beck usually isn’t one to display moral clarity on the network, so it was refreshing to see him push back on Bash and others engaging in anti-prayer messaging (click “expand”):
BECK: I heard some of the conversation earlier about thoughts and prayers. And I know in some ways we’ve come to wanting simply to dismiss those words. But right now I am at Manhattan University in New York, and there was scheduled a prayer service for all the athletes of the university. And so, just a few minutes ago, I was in that chapel with about 500 athletes, and most of them had not heard this news. So, we’re in a school setting, they’re students, and I announced this news and we started praying for these students and families and faculty and the students in that chapel — many of these athletes were weeping, weeping at this news as they prayed. And so, I think that the thoughts and prayers in some way affect change in us. So, I understand that we feel as though we need to do something, which I agree and proper thought and prayer leads to action, leads to result, but I think it begins there. I think it begins by kneeling in solidarity as a community, that this is just heinous and wrong and — and unjust, and that we need to do something about it. But that impetus comes from the shared humanity, the sense of community. I think.
BASH: Yeah, I mean, I listen that is so lovely, Father Beck, as I’m listening to you say that, and I can’t even imagine what that was like with 500 people, just a little while ago, including students weeping. But for you, you’re a catholic priest. That’s literally your job. That’s your calling as a leader to lead people in your community in thoughts and prayers. People here in Washington and in communities elected by voters across the country — their job might be to pray for their constituents, but then it’s also to make policy. And of course, that is the level of frustration. Not that they’re not praying, it’s that they’re praying. And then turning to something else and leaving this behind until the next horrific shooting happens.
(....)
BECK: [T]he question often in these situations that I would get asked is, how could god allow it? Where was God in it? And I think that is the question in a lot of people’s minds. In a church, while people were praying, so prayers didn’t help those children. And I think my only response can be that God is most present there in that sanctuary in that church, that that God’s heart grieves and is united at the loss of these children and what those parents and everyone connected to that school is going through. You know, it’s in some way that the suffering of God is — is — is united to the suffering of his people. Now you say, well, if God is all powerful, why doesn’t God do something? Now, we don’t have an answer for that. Job, in the sixth century BCE, was asking the same question in the Hebrew scriptures, and he doesn’t get an answer. He gets the answer, I’m sorry, I’m God and you’re not. You’re not going to always understand my ways, but I’m going to be with you in it. I’m not abandoning you. And so, I think in that sanctuary, if some of if this has to happen somewhere and it should never happen, the fact that it was in a place of prayer is both disturbing. Yet for me, somehow comforting that that God is in the midst of that sanctuary and with those children in a way that is so powerful that I can’t even comprehend it at this moment.
In the 1:00 p.m. Eastern hour of CNN News Central, senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak took the opportunity to make this tragedy into an anti-Trump talking point:
The next hour of the show brought a truly deranged moment with the father of a Parkland school shooting victim, who created an AI-generated version of his deceased son and was “interviewed” by former CNNer Jim Acosta:
To see the relevant transcripts from August 27, click here (for ABC), here (for CNN’s Inside Politics), and here (for CNN News Central).
