October 4, 2023

Ivanka just tried to pull attention away from mass shootings and got raked over the coals

The Republican Party and its propaganda machine are cranking out misinformation and obfuscations at a breakneck pace in the wake of this past weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

Worried that they might be forced to actually finally take legislative action against gun violence — alienating the NRA and their firearm fetishist donors in the process — the GOP is trying to blame these atrocities on everything from mental illness and video games.

In reality, the problem is far simpler: bloodthirsty disaffected young men, often in the service of white supremacist ideology, have easily accessible weapons of war at their disposal and are using them to perpetrate nihilistic bloodbaths on innocent Americans.

Now, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, that most sycophantic and hypocritical lackey of our psychopathic president, has trotted out her own distraction technique by bringing up gun deaths in Chicago. Time and time again we see Republicans point to urban violence in a whataboutist fashion as if Americans can’t be outraged about mass shootings and more common (but no less tragic) forms of gun violence. Both problems could be addressed with more reasonable gun regulations, which the GOP bears sole responsibility for blocking.

As some Twitter users were quick to point out, gun violence in Chicago is not something Ivanka regularly tweets about. She clearly brought it up today in an effort to draw attention away from this weekend’s mass shootings and the obvious culpability her father bears for stirring up racial division and failing to take any action to prevent mass shootings.

Ivanka’s faux concern is an insult to not only the victims and their families, but to all Americans who are forced to live in a country in which the specter of gun violence is constantly hovering over our heads. Children are being brought up in a world where they can’t even feel safe at school with their friends. If she actually cares about these senseless killings she’d be better off knocking on the Oval Office door than tweeting out banal observations.

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.