Trump weighs in on Texas school shooting — Analysis

Ex-President Donald Trump has responded to Tuesday’s school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, by calling for putting the safety of American children ahead of funding Ukraine’s war effort against Russia and investing in failed nation-building projects overseas.

“If the United States has $40 billion to send to Ukraine, we should be able to do whatever it takes to keep our children safe at home,”Trump spoke Friday at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston. “We spent trillions in Iraq, trillions in Afghanistan, we got nothing.

“Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation.”

Trump was criticized by Democrats for speaking at an event for the nation’s largest gun-rights lobbying group just three days after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School. He argued, however that critics of Trump are looking to profit from the tragedy for political gain and not proposing reforms that could have prevented it.

“Now is the time to find common ground,”According to the Florida billionaire. “Sadly, before the sun had even set on the horrible day of tragedy we witnessed, a now familiar parade of politicians seeking to exploit the tears of sobbing families to increase their own power and take away our constitutional rights.”

Trump claimed that President Joe Biden and the other Democrats were his successors “shamefully”In an attempt to win political points, suggested falsely that Republicans were “OK with letting school shootings happen.”He said, “This rhetoric is highly divisive and dangerous and, most importantly, it’s wrong. It has no place in our politics.”

Trump claimed that Biden also blamed supporters of gun rights for the Texas murders. “Every time a disturbed or a demented person commits such a hideous crime, there’s always a grotesque effort by some in our society to use the suffering of others to advance their own extreme political agenda. Even more repulsive is their rush to shift blame away from the villains who commit acts of mass violence and to place that blame onto the shoulders of millions of peaceful, law-abiding citizens who belong to organizations such as our wonderful NRA.”

Trump called Uvalde’s shooting “a tragedy.” “savage and barbaric atrocity that shocks the conscience of every single American.”During what he called “The Call”, he read the names of all victims. “a beautiful moment of silence for something that should never have even been thought about, let alone happened.”

Ever since the Columbine High School shooting – a 1999 massacre in Colorado that left 13 people dead – America has been afflicted by “a contagion of school shootings carried out by deeply evil, violent and mentally disturbed young men,”Trump spoke. Trump called for measures that could actually prevent violence such as strengthening mental services and effective responses to red flags, which are often raised prior to mass shootings.

“We need to drastically change our approach to mental health,”Trump declared. “There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile.”

Trump spared his harshest words to the Uvalde gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos at 18 years and killed on Tuesday by police. “The monster who committed this crime is pure evil, pure cruelty, pure hatred, absolute pure hatred. And while those he slaughtered are now with God in Heaven, he will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell.”