President Donald Trump complained that his predecessor Barack Obama wasn’t criticized for the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during an interview with Fox News on Monday.
After Laura Ingraham asked the president about last week’s attempted bombings of almost a dozen prominent Democrats who have been frequent targets of his incendiary rhetoric, Trump pivoted to criticizing the Washington Post before making the bizarre comments about Obama.
Referring to media reports that connected Trump’s rhetoric with the attempted bomber, whose van was covered with stickers supporting the president and taking aim at numerous Democrats and the media, Trump said, “They didn’t do that with President Obama with the church, the horrible situation with the church. They didn’t do that.”
Ingraham did not follow-up on Trump’s remarks to ask why Obama could have been blamed for a mass shooting that was carried out by a white supremacist.
Obama sang Amazing Grace during his eulogy for the nine Charleston victims at the Emanuel AME Church.
Trump’s reactions to last week’s attempted assassinations of his political opponents have included blaming the media and complaining that coverage of the crimes has taken attention away from Republicans in advance of next week’s midterm elections.