Donald Trump tweeted about the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 about3 hours after they occurred. The following month, he tweeted about the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., 90 minutes afterthe violence began. It took fewer than 12 hours from the time an EgyptAir flight went missing in May 2016for Trump to speculate publicly that the attack was terror-related. More than a year later, its still not clear what happened to the plane.
When terrorists drove a van into a crowd on London Bridge earlier this month, Trump tweeted about the need to be smart, vigilant and tough even before authorities identified terror as the motive behind the attack.
About 15 hours ago, as of this writing, a man drove a van into a group of Muslims near a mosque in London. The attack, which killed one person and injured 10 others, is being treated as terror-related by authorities in Britain. Prime Minister Theresa May described the attack as every bit as sickening as the attacks at the London Bridge and, earlier this year, on Westminster Bridge.
[Van strikes crowd near London mosques in terrorist attack]
Trump tweeted his condolences to the victims of those twoearlier attacks both linked to the Islamic State the same day they happened.Trump has nottweeted about Sunday nights attack on Muslims.
President Trump tends to quickly tweet about potential terrorist attacks, but he has drawn criticism for reacting slowly to recent attacks in Oregon and Kansas. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
In response to a crisis, one of the simplest responses from a president is a carefully worded statement of support, condolence or outrage. Simpler still is a brief message on social media. Trump built his political career in part on his willingness to jump into any number of frays by tweeting about them. As weve noted in the past, he shows little reticence to tweet about things he sees on television right after he sees them. Yet, Monday morning: silence.
Trumps use of Twitter betrays his interests and disinterests. On Sunday, Fathers Day, Trump tweeted, in order:
That Trumphasnt mentioned the attacks on Muslims in London isnt surprising, mind you. It took days for him to praise the two men who were stabbed to death in Portland, Ore., while defending Muslim women on a train. It took almost a week for him to speak out about the shooting of two Indian men in Kansas by someone who thought that they were Muslim. In one sense, its odd that Trump hasnt tweeted condolences to the victims in London, given the criticism hes received for his slow response to the above attacks but, again, its not surprising that he hasnt, given his history.
The Washington Post's Karla Adam explains how an attack near two mosques in London on June 19 is effecting the city's Muslim residents. (Karla Adam,Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
[Brave and selfless Oregon stabbing victims hailed as heroes for standing up to racist rants]
The broader question is why Trump remains uninterested in acknowledging such attacks.
One likely explanation is that Trump seesattacks by people of the Muslim faith through the lens of a rampant anti-Western ideology but views attacks on Muslims as being one-off examples of bad actors. The emergence of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State reinforced the idea that theres a substantial, organized subset of the worlds Muslim population focused on political violence.
Absent those groups, attacks like the one on Westminster Bridge or at Orlandos Pulse nightclub might more easily be treated as aberrant individual actions in the way that the attack on Muslims in London will be treated in some quarters. That theres a strong but largely disorganized anti-Muslim undercurrent in Western societies that can make Muslims a target of violence lacks the sort of readily identifiable markers as a coordinated terror group, especially for those unwilling to see them.
[An attack on Muslims leaving a mosque in London is exactly what ISIS wanted]
In June 2015, when a white gunman shotnine black worshipers dead at a church in Charleston, S.C., shortly after Trump announced his presidential candidacy, Trump tweeted about it.
It was incomprehensible in the sense that murdering nine people at church is an affront to our sense of humans as rational creatures. It was entirely comprehensible in the sense that a white man who held racist views might target black people in a shooting spree.
To view attacks by Muslims as part of what being Muslim is about but attacks on Muslims as being distinct from the identities of the perpetrators demands seeing those two groups as fundamentally different. Trump has a presumption of guilt for Muslims that he doesnt for the white peoplewho committed the crimes in Kansas, Portland and at the London mosque.
[Londons Muslim mayor ignores Trumps latest taunts, despite ongoing feud]
Its interesting to compareTrumpsresponse to the Charleston shooting with his response to the 1980s rape of a white woman in Central Park, for which a group of black and Hispanic teenagers were arrested and which prompted Trump to buy a full-page ad calling for thedeath penalty for the accused.
Those teenagers were later exonerated when another man admitted to the crime. But Trump, even as recently as last October, seemed to believethat the teenagers werethe perpetrators. They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty, Trump said last year eliding the critical point that the confessions were obtained under duress. In Trumps eyes, those teenagers are guilty despite the judicial system rescinding that verdict.
Trumps presidential campaign and therefore his presidency relied on the idea that America was under threat from terrorism and crime, apoint of view that necessarily overlapped with Americas complex racial history. Thats the other reason Trump highlights terrorist acts by Muslims and ignores those against them: He has reapedpolitical rewards from it.
Trump views terrorism through a very particular lens, and hewon the presidency by articulating that lens. That its reflected in his Twitter account, then, isnot a surprise.
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Why won't Donald Trump rush to tweet criticism of attacks against Muslims? - Washington Post