Charles Blow: A ‘Really Big Problem’ in Domestic Terror Is ‘Young White Men in America’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
I mean, and, you know, Mitch, mayor landrieu, what’s challenging about this is that, you know, elected officials have a different set of responsibilities than even those of us in the news business. This is a breaking news story. So, you’re going to — to Charles’ points, you’re going to get facts wrong. The FBI has been flipping their story. First they were like not terrorism, then they were like terrorism. They have been shifting their narrative too, let’s be clear. But now you have elected officials, people like the speaker of the House, people like the incoming president. They don’t feel any tether to truth or facts because their whole business is around demonizing the border. Facts complicate narratives. There was a guy in vegas sitting in that truck when it blew up. He was a white guy, army veteran too, the guy in Virginia with all the bombs, not brown, not black, white guy, lots of bombs, problem with the narrative.
>> Let me just mention a couple of things. First of all, I was the lieutenant governor when Katrina hit. So, in my life as a lieutenant governor and as a mayor and executive, I’ve been through — all of the things that I was mayor, shootings and now of course this terrorist attack. And when an event happens, whether it’s a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, the most important thing that the American people want and need are their leaders, federal, state, and local, whoever they happen to be at the time, some Democrat, some Republican, to put aside all of the political jargon and to focus with a laser on, a, how to stop it and prevent it from happening, but if it does happen, responding well, and making sure you learn from your mistakes. And in this thing, the searing truth is the most critically important thing you can do. Post-9/11, there was a report after 9/11 about, you know, some deficiencies in the response. You saw it after Katrina and hopefully you’ll see it after this. It’s really important that everybody really, kind of, gets stuck on what the truth is so that we know how to get better next time because everybody in America has a right to be safe and secure in their homes and in their communities where they live. And I would just, you know, double check all the elected officials now and stay focused on what the facts are. And let’s move from the facts. And we have some domestic problems in this country that we have to keep an eye on.
>> Yeah. And last word to you on this, Charles, because this is the challenge. It’s very difficult to feel safe when on top of everything that mayor landrieu just said, you have politicians that have a self-interest in lying about everything because it helps them with the political narrative, not concerned about the human narrative that could actually be really helpful.
>> And that is the tragedy of all of this, right? There are real tragedies. There will always be crime. You know, unfortunately what we try to do is keep the crime as low as possible. All different kinds of people will commit crimes. The problem here is that you jump on one sort of crime, one crime committed by one name that sounds exotic, one brown face, rather than looking at all of the domestic terror that we face, including what the — says is a really big problem, which is young white men in American. We need to look at all of our domestic terrorism and say, this all is a problem.
>> Indeed. Exactly. And it is Americans that we need to be talking about. This is about us.