On Friday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested that it was absolutely “wrong” for a shooting suspect, who left 49 people dead and 40 others injured in New Zealand, to claim that Donald Trump is any kind of “white identity” symbol.
As The Hill reported, Conway stated categorically that Trump was absolutely not a white nationalist symbol, and said that the assertions of the hate crime suspect about the president were patently false.
“He’s wrong. The shooter is an evil, hateful person. He’s wrong about that.”
Kellyanne Conway was questioned by a reporter as to how Donald Trump might feel upon learning that he was mentioned by the New Zealand suspect.
“Are you disturbed that somebody could be so hateful and evil?” she responded.
She then went on to say that she was personally appalled by the decision to show “all this carnage” on the news in live stream fashion with Donald Trump’s name thrown into the mix.
“I think you should cover the entire manifesto if you’re going to cherry pick a piece of it. Respectfully, you have a duty to talk about what’s motivating hate and violence,” she said.
After the deadly New Zealand shootings, it was revealed that one of the suspects involved had composed a lengthy 74-page manifesto which described Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” although not a “policy maker and leader.”
JUST IN: Conway: New Zealand attack suspect “wrong” to call Trump a symbol of white nationalism https://t.co/AEwBC8AtgV pic.twitter.com/QEsW92ZWWm
— The Hill (@thehill) March 15, 2019
The rantings and writings in the New Zealand terror suspect’s manifesto once again have sparked another national debate about whether Trump shares any of the blame and responsibility for the swift rise of white nationalism in America. In 2017, the president admitted that there were certainly some “very fine people on both sides” that had been involved in a white supremacist rally that took place in Virginia, which later turned violent and ugly.
For his part, Donald Trump promptly spoke up about what he called the “horrible massacre in the Mosques” in New Zealand and posted on Twitter that he had spoken with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to express his sympathy and support, noting that he was standing by and would help if necessary, ending his tweet by saying, “We love you New Zealand!”
Kellyanne Conway stated that later on Friday, Trump would be personally discussing the New Zealand terror attack during a ceremony in which he will reportedly be vetoing legislation which would stop the national emergency that he recently declared with respect to the southwest border and his attempt to build a border wall.
