After Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man accused of mailing bombs to at least 14 prominent critics of Donald Trump, was revealed as Inquisitr reported to be an ardent supporter of Trump who drove a van plastered with pro-Trump stickers, Trump has denied that there is any connection between his extreme rhetoric aimed at Democrats and others, and the bombings allegedly carried out by Sayoc.
But on Monday, during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump went a step further asking why media reports never blamed President Barack Obama for the 2015 church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, as Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent Daniel Dale noted on his Twitter account.
Trump also wondered why 2016 Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders was not held responsible for a 2017 shooting of Republican congressional rep Steve Scalise last year. The gunman in that incident had reportedly volunteered to work on Sanders campaign, according to a Time Magazine report.
Sanders has never publicly attacked Scalise by name, but Trump, as the New York Times reported, has repeatedly insulted many of the recipients of bombs allegedly mailed by Sayoc.
But Trump’s puzzlement at why Obama was not blamed for the June 2015 massacre of nine African-American worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston would appear to have no basis at all, as Obama — the first and only African-American president — did not use rhetoric that would have inspired the gunman, Dylan Roof, who is a self-avowed racist, as CNN reported.
Watch Trump making the comparison between the mail bombings and the Charleston massacre in the video below.
Trump draws false equivalency between Bernie Sanders having deranged fan & his own encouragement of violence against the media: “Bernie had a fan who shot a good friend of ours, Scalise, & other people. He was a total maniac. Nobody puts his name in the headline, Bernie Sanders.” pic.twitter.com/zlab48CknG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2018
“I was in the headline of The Washington Post , my name associated with this crazy bomber. Trump bomber or something, but I was in the headline when they got him,” Trump said to Ingraham, quoted by the news video site Grabien .
“He didn’t say bomber found, they talked about Trump in the they didn’t do that with Bernie Sanders when he had — they didn’t do that with the Democrats want other people came out. They didn’t do that with President Obama with the church.”
Sayoc not only pasted pro-Trump and anti-Democrat stickers all over his van, he was spotted — and filmed — at a 2017 Trump rally in Melbourne, Florida, according to the Washington Post . In the video, Sayoc can be seen enthusiastically going the crowd in chants against the media and the news network CNN.
In fact, CNN was the intended recipient of three “suspicious packages,” according to a CNN Twitter post, believed to have been mailed by Sayoc.
