President Trump Goes Plural on Manchester Terror, Gets Real with Mahmoud Abbas

“Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded, and even rewarded.”

That was one of several pointed lines in President Trump’s remarks from Bethlehem Tuesday morning as he delivered a joint press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

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And that’s not all. He used the plurals when discussing the attack. That matters. I have quotes below, but first, here’s the clip of his admonition to Palestine.


(Full opening remarks on Manchester attack posted here by Jennifer Van Laar.)

“It’s so interesting our meeting took place on this very horrible morning of death to innocent young people. Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded, and even rewarded. We must be resolute in condemning such acts in a single, unified voice.”

This is an important point to make to Abbas. It seems like never more than a few days go by without hearing about someone attacking guards at an outpost or civilians on the street in Israel, and such incidents are absolutely tolerated and rewarded. Moreover, Palestinian activists here in the United States laud them and use eliminationist or even genocidal rhetoric regarding Jews and the state of Israel, indicating their support for more such attacks. If there is to be a supposed peace, it can’t be just about where borders are drawn, but about whether an environment of violence and terror will continue to be tolerated, funded, and rewarded.

It wasn’t the only salient point, here, however.

The President repeatedly used the plurals when talking about the attack in Manchester. He said the mostly young victims were murdered by “evil losers,” plural, and that he “won’t call them monsters because they would like that.”

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Throughout, he refers to an evil ideology, establishes a pattern, and identifies this attacker as part of a group, acting in concert with that group. That is a far cry from the last eight years, when Obama did everything he could to paint each of many terror attacks as lone wolf individuals committing singular attacks due to their own disturbed state of mind.

The media prefers that game, and they’re still playing it, as you can see from this example:

That “whether” is pretty important. The media is subtly giving the impression across the board that this has been definitively labeled a lone wolf attack. That is decidedly not the case. The investigation is ongoing. The Chief Constable literally said they were investigating “whether he was acting alone or as part of a network.” If they are investigating to find out if he was acting alone, why is CNN reporting that the police said he acted alone?

They’ve weasel-worded it so they can say they meant he was alone during the attack, but that’s not the impression they are working so hard to give.

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President Trump put the Manchester bomber back in the plurals. He put him back into a big picture, and that picture was extended to include acts of violence in Israel. It’s a powerfully combined message (which would have been more so, if better delivered) that we haven’t seen or heard for some time from the White House.

Would that the messenger were a match for the message. But that’s a small lament against the broader implications of such a speech even making it out of draft these days. I’d rather hear an okay delivery of truth than a remarkable delivery of a lie. And the truth is that many times, what is dismissed as a one-off, lone wolf attack by the media and some democrats is actually part of a broader movement, and even directly involves aid and assistance from that network.

It is that very possibility that police in Manchester are investigating right now, despite media attempts to call the matter settled. And it is that very web of violence and ideology that must be addressed, along with the many other aspects of dispute, in talks with Israel and Palestine.

Now if we can just get him to stop sharing classified intel with Russia …

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