The only person to blame is the one who pulled the trigger – unless you’re trying to play politics

Some ugliness also emerged in the wake of the bullets fired by the 20-year-old, who was killed, and that needs to be forcefully called out as well.

We have had enough of the cynical attempts to blame horrific shootings on the left or right, or on public figures who had nothing to do with it, by exploiting a tragedy to score cheap political points.

Those who peddle the mean-spirited “blood on his hands” theories, especially on places like X, should just be ignored. The media shouldn’t take the bait, even if it generates clicks and ratings. The blame game is corrosive and irrelevant.

Trump himself has often been accused of fomenting violence with some of his harsher language at rallies, so it’s ironic that he came close to being a victim.

Yet it’s also true that Trump has been pounded by the press for nine long years, particularly after Jan. 6, and castigated as an aspiring dictator and danger to democracy, even going so far as morphing his face into that of Hitler on a recent The New Republic cover.

Such demonization could easily convince a mentally unbalanced person that the world would be better off without him.

The left has certainly employed the tactic. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton, who had used his presidential pulpit to criticize Rush Limbaugh,…

The 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson sparked an irrational attack blaming Sarah Palin because her campaign had released a political map with crosshairs marking the Democratic districts being targeted.

Trump said after the shooting that we must “stand united” and “remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” Biden called the violence “sick” and said “we cannot condone this,” adding yesterday: “It’s not America.” Speaker Mike Johnson said “we’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country.”

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