Political Experts Weigh In On Potential Impact Rhetoric May Have Had On El Paso Mass Murder
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - After the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio that left 31 people dead, state and national leaders are trying to unite this country.
But there are differences in what people believe led to the El Paso shooting.
Can the horrific violence be blamed on political rhetoric?
On Monday, President Donald Trump denounced hate and urged Americans to do the same.
"In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America," he said.
Some Democrats have called the president a white supremacist and racist, and blamed him for the mass shooting in El Paso, after the shooter left behind his anti-Hispanic manifesto.
The president's supporters sharply disagree.
SMU Political Science Professor Matthew Wilson says everyone, including the president, should dial down their rhetoric.
"We can talk about the climate of discourse in our country and the president's contributions to that, but trying to directly link him to this act of violence, seems to me too far of a step. When everyone is saying everyone else in our politics has blood on their hands, and that everyone's political positions and rhetorical stances are contributing to horrific violence, it just dials up the rhetoric to 11. It makes any kind of political accommodation or compromise or sense of national unity all that much more difficult."
SMU Presidential Historian Jeffrey Engel says more is expected of the president.
"Obviously, it's impossible to know whether the President is responsible for any one particular act and clearly, we've had gun violence well before Donald Trump was on the political scene. But the truth of the matter is the President of the United States is really the moral voice of the nation and somebody with that much power, what Theodore Roosevelt used to call the bully pulpit, if they're not making things better, in a sense, they're making things worse. It's very easy for Donald Trump to say he has castigated and called out bigotry and racism, and white supremacy, but the truth is those are cheap words, cheap talk. He's been accused of this language ever since he came on to the political scene."
President Trump also mentioned red flag laws, aimed at keeping guns away from potentially dangerous people - once they've had their due process.
Wilson said, "That may be a potential point of compromise between Democrats and Republicans, between gun owners and gun control activists, but everyone seems to agree that we need to prevent dangerous and unbalanced people from getting access to weapons."
But Engel said he isn't so sure anything will change. "Every time there is an appetite from the American public after every one of these mass shootings, it dies a political death in Congress after that. The problem is the American public is not being listened to."
