Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin accused President Donald Trump of “fomenting violence” against journalists.
Rubin, a staunch critic of Trump’s, linked the Republican’s past comments about reporters to a shooting in a Maryland newsroom on Thursday that left five journalists dead. That despite evidence suggesting the shooting suspect, Jarrod Warren Ramos, had a long-standing feud with the Capital Gazette over an unfavorable article published about him in 2011.
“We haven’t talked very much about what happened in Annapolis,” Rubin said during a panel discussion on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday.
Before Ramos was identified, liberals and some journalists widely speculated the shooter was motivated by Trump’s past comments about journalists. (RELATED: Annapolis Shooter Identified, Calling Newspaper His ‘Sworn Blood Enemies’)
Rubin, who labels herself a conservative, did not acknowledge the information about Ramos’s history with the Capital Gazette, blaming Trump instead.
“The person who is fomenting violence the most is the president of the United States,” she said on Maher’s show on Friday. “He turns the crowd on journalists, a hooting, hollering, screaming mass of people. He individually picks out journalists for them to direct their ire.”
“He calls us the enemy of the people. He says that we are unpatriotic, that we do not love our country, and we’re surprised when someone picks up a gun to kill us?” (RELATED: Trump Breaks Silence On Maryland Shooting)
Trump has criticized journalists in the past, both on Twitter and in his public speeches. He often refers to the mainstream press as “fake news.” But he responded to the Maryland shooting on Friday, saying that “journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their jobs.”
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