The left’s reaction to Wednesday’s horrifying shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis has been truly stunning.
The 23-year-old shooter, a man pretending to be a woman who identified as transgender, shot and killed an eight year old and a 10 year old. Fourteen other kids were wounded, as were three adults in their eighties. Miraculously, all of the wounded are expected to survive.
‘Infuriating’ Jacob Frey
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X that the bureau is investigating this shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and as a hate crime targeting Catholics. But in the aftermath, Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey made sure his focus was on protecting not children, not Catholics, but the trans community. Here is what he said to a nodding Erin Burnett on CNN last night:
FREY: …Obviously, I’ve heard about the rhetoric and the narrative that is being pushed out, but here’s the thing: Anybody that is going to use this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any community, has lost touch with a common humanity. We got to be operating not out of hate for any group, but out of a love for our children. That’s where the focus needs to be right now. A love for our kids. Seeing these kids not just as somebody else’s kids, this horrific thing happened, but what if it was our own? How would we feel then? So look, we need to be standing up for every community out there, Catholic community, too, by the way.
He doesn’t know anything. It is not about hating the trans community. It is about being honest about what was wrong with this obviously extremely mentally ill man who picked up his guns – three of them, to be exact – and shot a bunch of kids. It is not about hate. How dare you try to turn this into a pro-LGBTQ moment.
We have to get really honest about what was wrong with this shooter. And P.S., it is the same thing that has been wrong with shooters in a multitude of mass shootings now, which your side, mayor, refuses to acknowledge. It is about calling a spade a spade.
And did you notice that he mentioned the Catholic community as an afterthought. It was a “by the way.” Thanks for the nod of the head. We really appreciate you deigning to acknowledge that Catholics have been targeted here. I mean, he literally put the group that was the targeted, chosen victims of the shooting as an afterthought because what this is really about is how mean we are to trans people. It is infuriating watching that guy.
Lies of Omission
If you look at what is happening today in corporate media, however, the mayor is right on message. As Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics pointed out on X, The New York Times has a whole article about the shooter that only mentions his gender identity in the context of pointing out that conservatives are attacking it. Apparently, it is not even considered something we should be looking at and trying to figure out what was wrong with this shooter’s head.
In an article entitled “How the ‘absolutely incomprehensible’ shooting unfolded at Annunciation Catholic School,” CNN’s Chelsea Bailey makes no mention of the shooter’s gender identity. The same goes for USA Today. They are completely whitewashing it like it is a non-factor.
And then there was NPR’s Ailsa Chang interviewing Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on this issue yesterday. Two children have just been shot dead, you’ve got another 17 who have been wounded, and notice to what is upsetting Ms. Chang in this discussion:
KLOBUCHAR: …There is, of course, the hate you’re going to find that this perpetrator, that this horrific offender, that he, that it was all purpose hate, right? He hated a lot of different groups. It wasn’t one ideology or another.
CHANG: We’re going to have to leave it there. That is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota… And just a point of clarification, Sen. Klobuchar referenced the shooter as ‘he.’ Although police have identified a suspect, it’s still unclear at this time what that person’s gender is or how they identify.
Oh my God.
All About Guns
All the left wants to talk about is guns. That’s it. The guns are the problem and also, by the way, they are sick and tired of our thoughts and prayers. I’ll give you a weepy Jen Psaki on MSNBC:
PSAKI: …All they should be hoping to do is have someone to sit with at lunch or someone to play with on the playground. They should be waiting to hear an update when they get home. And that is not what these parents at the school experienced today… We have been here so many times, so many times, and yet again, like clockwork, half the politicians in our country have little more to offer than thoughts and prayers. That is all they are offering. You’re going to start seeing narratives… You’re already seeing them. They’re already out there about how the shooter was trans. You’re going to see narratives about how the shooter appeared to be anti-Trump and antisemitic, and clearly was in the midst of a mental health crisis…
Weaponizing the shooter’s identity is meant to distract from what matters. That is what they are doing, trying to distract from what matters. Here’s what matters. Today’s shooter bought the rifle, handgun and shotgun they used to do what they did today legally… It’s the guns, everyone. It’s not really a secret.
She won’t talk about anything else. She just wants to act exasperated in front of her audience that it’s ‘all about the guns,’ that a madman like this wouldn’t have found an alternative way of hurting these children. In Jen Psaki’s world, you just take away the guns and then they will never hurt somebody again.
The gun control solution is totally impractical. It is never happening. Even if people wanted it and voted for it, there is no way of getting 400 million guns out of the United States of America. It is not a possible thing to do. And even if you did it, you would still have mass murder because mad men do what mad men do.
The solution is to look at the mad men and figure out how to keep them away from the rest of us, figure out if you can stop the deterioration. But if you can’t, I am all for institutionalizing these people when it is clear that they are a danger to society. And at a minimum, we should be fortifying all the soft targets that we know they want to hit. We have way too much evidence that schools are vulnerable and that places of worship are vulnerable.
‘What a Liar’
But in keeping with the left’s narrative, you had former Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe on CNN this morning drawing the line between the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, by a girl who said she was trans and targeted the Christian school and the Minneapolis shooting we had yesterday.
This is a former law enforcement official talking about all the similarities he’s noticed. But see if you can glean what is not included on his list:
MCCABE: …I haven’t seen the manifestos, so I can’t say whether there are specific references to the 2023, covenant school shooter in Nashville. But if you look at that situation and this one, there are remarkable similarities. Both were in their twenties; both targeted religious schools that they formerly attended; both brought three weapons to the crime; both purchased those weapons legally; both drove to the attack site and left a vehicle there; both posted manifestos in which they raged and expressed grievance towards numerous ethnic groups and religions…; both sought to kill children, young children, specifically; and I think the most important here is both were students of other mass shooters…
He doesn’t even mention the trans connection. The same cannot be said of former FBI special agent Katherine Schweit on MSNBC. She was talking about how the shooter became radicalized when she appeared to catch herself making a – gasp! – reference to gender identity:
SCHWEIT: They likely stopped communicating with other people. They began to withdraw and change their appearance. And, and I don’t mean change their appearance like you might hear. I understand at least early reporting is that we have someone, you know, who, who is female and– but became– presents female, but was male. So, I’m not talking about that kind of change appearance. I mean the clothing, the dark, the jackets, and things like that. People begin to say, ‘Hey, what is going on with this person around me?’ We’re not doing a good job of looking for that type of thing.
What a liar. She did mean the trans thing. She just caught herself. ‘Oh, we have to look for people changing from tan jackets into black jackets.’ That’s a bunch of bullsh-t. She had a moment of saying what was real, and then realized she couldn’t say that on MSNBC. Meanwhile, Andy McCabe doesn’t even mention it as a possible factor to be considered.
Ignoring the Issue
The New York Post got it right this morning with a front page that read: “Demonic: Transgender maniac shoots up Catholic school morning Mass, killing two kids.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is factually correct, but this was Joe Scarborough’s reaction to it on Morning Joe:
SCARBOROUGH: …They say ‘demonic’ and then it’s ‘transgender maniac shoots up Catholic school.’ You know, they could very easily say time and time again ‘straight white maniac’ shoots up Catholic school, or shoots up a country music concert, or shoots up this, or shoots up that. I mean, I suppose some people will try to distract from the ongoing mass slaughters that are going on of our children, schools, and churches, and across the country, of people that go to country music concerts, of people who are sitting in pews at churches, at Baptist churches. I mean, we could go on and on and on. So again, I suppose they can focus on, on whether it was transgender or straight white male or whatever it was. Fact is, this is happening too much.
He is acting like ‘transgender’ is the same kind of label as ‘white’ or ‘black’ and doesn’t come with a whole host of mental health implications. He is trying to suggest the Post is a bunch of bigots because they never say ‘straight white male goes in and shoots up a high school.’ By the way, yes, they do. But he completely ignores that we are talking about mental illness and the left has made that an impossibility to discuss.
I just think it is so clear this guy had mental health problems. From his mother to potentially a mental health counselor, he was funneled into some system that probably just affirmed, affirmed, affirmed. And by his own words, he didn’t actually think he was transgender. He got to the point of realizing, What am I doing here?
But I guarantee you no one had ever taken a serious look at why he was saying he was trans to begin with. He was probably just affirmed, especially in the state of Minnesota. And it was one of, I’m sure, a multitude of factors that led to the mass murder we watched him commit yesterday.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,137 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.