WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump “doesn’t tweet about everything,” one of his top aides said Tuesday in trying to explain his silence on the terrorist massacre of six people at a Quebec City mosque.
Trump’s spokesman and defence secretary have publicly expressed their condolences to Canada. But the president’s decision to avoid any comment of his own has come under renewed American scrutiny in the wake of his false accusation that the media is ignoring terror attacks committed by Islamic extremists.
CNN host Jake Tapper pressed Trump counsellor Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday.
“In Quebec City last week, a white right-wing terrorist opened fire on a mosque. A mosque filled with innocent men, woman and children. Six people were killed. President Trump has not said or tweeted one public word about this,” Tapper said. “You want to talk about ignoring terrorism? Why hasn’t the president offered his sympathy to our neighbours in the north?”
“I know he’s sympathetic to any loss of life,” Conway responded. “It’s completely senseless and it needs to stop regardless of who is lodging the attack. We of course are very sad about loss of life here.”
She continued, “I will ask him. He doesn’t tweet about everything. He doesn’t make a comment about everything.” She said later, “Put us on record as always being sad about the senseless loss of life.”
Trump is known for his prolific use of Twitter to discuss trivial matters. Since the mosque shooting on Jan. 29, he has tweeted insults of the New York Times, congratulated the winners of the Super Bowl, and disparaged Arnold Schwarzenegger, among other things. He also publicized an attempted attack near the Louvre art museum in Paris, in which nobody was killed, calling the machete attacker “a new radical Islamic terrorist” and urging America to “get smart.”
Trump, who employed regular anti-Muslim bigotry during his campaign, has relentlessly emphasized the threat of Islamic extremism while saying almost nothing about other threats. The man charged in the Quebec attack, Alexandre Bissonnette, has been alleged to have expressed right-wing views online.
This is the second way in which the administration’s response to the attack has been criticized.
After conveying sympathies to Canada, Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, implausibly attempted to use the attack on Muslims to justify Trump’s ban on entrants from seven mostly Muslim countries.
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