The Daily Show host Jon Stewart called out a number of glaring inconsistencies in the political response to the death of Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. The pair were shot and killed in their home in what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said “appears to be a politically motivated assassination.” Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times. News pundits have since zeroed in on questioning who the shooter, Vance Boelter, 57, aligned himself with and what his overarching motive was. Stewart is concerned about the more pressing questions this brings up.
“I mean no disrespect,” Stewart said. “I don’t give a fuck why this person did it. I just don’t give a fuck. I don’t care whose team he’s on. I don’t care if he listens to NPR or Fox News. I don’t give a flying fuck. What blows my mind is our resignation in the aftermath of this nonsense. ‘What are you gonna do?’ I don’t know, put a shit ton of funding into mental health? Put a shit ton of money into illegal weapons interdiction? We’re willing to do things about other issues.”
Stewart noted the hypocrisy this exhibits as social unrest swells in downtown Los Angeles, where President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard in response to protests against ICE and his administration’s immigration policies. In news clips, commentators decried the “dangerous criminals” who “continue to flood our nation and kill our citizens” and expressed fear for their children. “They have blood on their hands, pure and simple,” another said. “One is too many.” Stewart wondered aloud why this ideology is never extended to the long-running list of violent tragedies perpetrated by Americans.
“One is too many. One death. By the way — true. It is too many. Violence should never be accepted. It should never be tolerated, but that’s for their issue,” he said, before listing off mass shootings from the past 25 years. Sandy Hook. Uvalde. Parkland. Pulse nightclub. Virginia Tech. Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina. He named dozens more. “And what are we fucking doing? What are we doing? Find by the way, that is a wildly incomplete list. We kept it to the last 25 years, and it’s still not everything. And what’s their response to all that?”
More news clips followed in which pundits suggested the left is only intent on politicizing these incidents to take away guns. “Turns out, when it comes to mass shootings, one is not too many. Actually, a shitload isn’t too many,” Stewart said. “And by the way, you can say Second Amendment all you want, but you definitely don’t seem to mind throwing out the Constitution when it comes to deportation.”
He added: “I am legitimately asking this question, this is truly legitimate. I am genuinely baffled. Why is it when a foreigner or someone that shouldn’t be here kills one of us, we’re gonna put 150 billion into border security. We’re gonna militarize our cities. We’re gonna spend trillions of dollars to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas. We’re gonna ban people from random countries from ever visiting here. We’re gonna take our shoes off at the airport forever. But when we do it to ourselves — nothing. Is it that the only acceptable deaths are those that are made in America? Our only response now is to tally up the psycho scoreboard on whose side the perp belongs to? I honestly would like to know, like it makes no sense. It’s jarring cognitive dissonance.”
From Rolling Stone US
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