I saw Republican U.S. Representative and House Majority Leader Steven Scalise strategically seated behind House Speaker Johnson in the House chambers celebrating the slim passage of the budget bill and again Scalise was visible standing behind Trump at the signing of the budget bill.
Scalise is the Congressman who, along with four others, was shot by a gunman on a softball field in a DC suburb in 2017. In a wild shootout (110 rounds fired), Capitol police officers on the protective detail killed the lone gunman. The officer who shot and killed the gunman happened to be a female. Good for her! Do you think Scalise would accuse her of being a DEI hire? Just curious.
A bullet shattered Scalise’s femur and did considerable damage to Scalise’s hip and pelvis. Steel plates and nine surgeries were needed to “rebuilding Humpty Dumpty” according to Scalise. Intensive rehabilitation and therapy followed. Scalise uses a cane and walks with a limp to this day. Incidentally, this is a testament to how Scalise, representatives in Congress and Trump enjoy Cadillac health insurance coverage unlike ordinary Americans.
More recently, there was political gun violence in Minnesota where a state senator and her husband were killed and another state legislator and his wife were injured in a separate shooting. Two firemen were senselessly killed and one other injured in Idaho. The gunmen in these shootings and in Trump’s assassination attempts were white males and not undocumented immigrants.
Where is the condemnation from Trump, Noem, Homan and Miller? What do we hear from them? Apathy, scapegoating of immigrants, dogma, self-righteous arrogance, belligerence and contrived anecdotes about violent criminal illegal aliens; and not one word about white males perpetrating more gun violence in this country than any other demographic.
Mass shootings and political violence by white males (named here because they should not to be rendered abstract) Vance Boelter, Wess Roley, James Holmes, Elliott Rodger, Adam Lanzer, Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius, Conner Betts, Nikolas Cruz, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Chase Garvey, Robert Crimo, Payton Gendron and 1,200 January 6th insurrectionist; among so many others, who are the real threat to our homeland security and not the undocumented.
Republicans continue to obsessively pretend nothing is wrong. Trump and Scalise survived gun violence and yet the two are foolishly timid, and corrupted by the dishonorable and financially bankrupted NRA lobby to have any courage to advocate for sensible gun control. When will Scalise and Trump, victims of gun violence, have the courage to advocate for and to sponsor federal legislation for sensible gun control?
Until then, they will continue to be two of many Republicans who are poster boys for denial when it comes to wanton gun violence. Also, Scalise and Trump won’t take a stand on gun control because they are controlled by lucrative influence peddling. Silence and militant denial continues to prevail in the Republican Party.
Stanley McKie
Enumclaw
