The Fox News host and his guests blame — wait for it — video games and social media for white nationalist mass shootings by white males.
August 4, 2019

Shortly after the Texas Governor and El Paso chief of police held a press conference on the Walmart mass murder and indicating it was a hate crime, a Fox News host tried to blame video games as the major reason mass shooters do what they do.

Host Jon Scott brought on former ATF agent Bernard Zapor and a former terrorist task force member Steve Rogers to discuss the reasons why these mass shootings are occurring more frequently.

And as you would expect, not a mention of white supremacists, other hate groups, online radicalization or Trump.

Jon Scott and Lt Gov. Dan Patrick both said in the 2018 Santa Fe shooting of 2018 that video games were at the heart of this mass murderers, a typical NRA talking point that has no scientific basis and is just a ploy to defend guns.

Yesterday host Jon Scott wanted to know, "Why does a 21 year old white guy go 600 miles across the state and murder twenty people?"

Rogers said that the killer's manifesto would reveal much and then eliminated the idea that terrorism was behind the shooting.

"Let's eliminate any acts of terrorism," he said.

WTF is a domestic terrorist, then, Jackass?

Rogers then blamed social media tech companies as the major influencer on young minds because they show videos of kids fighting instead of people being radicalized on line right wing extremists and home grown terrorists.

"I've said it again, over and over again, our social media tech giants have to take some responsibility as to what they're posting online," Rogers said.

He continued, "Look, I go online and I see kids beating up kids, fights in the street and on and on and on. which, in my view as a law enforcement officer, could end up being a trigger for something, for someone who is mentally imbalanced to actually commit this type of act."

How about when the president claims over and over and over again that Mexicans are rapists and migrant Latinos seeking asylum are invading our country and bringing diseases, drugs and sex traffickers? Is that not an influence also? And if video games and social media were such a strong influence, why are none of the mass shooters women? Lots of women play video games and use social media.

Jon Scott immediately jumped on his favorite NRA trope again, video games.

Scott turned to Bernard Zapor and said, "What about video games? So many of these school shooters and others have been sort of raised on a diet of violet video games -- violent video games. is that a factor or is it not?"

Zapor said, "It doesn't." He then discussed other reasons why someone would commit such an atrocity.

The shooter told you his reasons why in his manifesto. And he was so worried that the media would see how Trump influenced his actions that he name-dropped him to deflect the president's effort to whip up hatred.

That tells you all you need to know.

I'll wait for Kellyanne Conway to use the manifesto to defend Trump in the coming days.

Conway did respond.

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