U.S. Corporate media ignores that man who waged deadly attack on a Mormon church was a Trump supporter
This fact was covered by international media but not US
It was a tale of two media worlds. In the United Kingdom, the headlines on Monday morning told us that the killer who waged a deadly attack on a Mormon church in Michigan on Sunday was a Trump supporter. (See The Telegraph headline below.)
But back in the United States, not only was that fact not in the headlines--it was either ignored or buried in the article.
This matters. We are living in a time where Donald Trump is trying to create a narrative that all high-profile acts of violence are carried out by Democrats. The apparent goal is to justify designating the Democratic party as a domestic terrorist group to allow the Trump regime to target Democratic officials, prosecute big donors to Democratic campaigns, etc.
I’m not speculating about that fact. It’s what Trump’s right hand gargoyle Stephen Miller demanded after Charlie Kirk was killed, stating, “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned while sharing a clip of Miller, “Wake up, America. Stephen Miller has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization.”
And just days ago, Trump’s Homeland Security head Kristi Noem was on CNN where she refused to rule out labeling the Democratic Party an extremist group. Instead, Noem stated, “I think their views are extreme and don’t align with the American people at all.”
To be clear, when we first heard of the horrific attack Sunday, Trump quickly sought to weaponize the tragedy for political gain. Trump posted online even before the facts were fully known, “This appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.” Obviously, Trump was positioning himself as the protector of Christians from those outside of MAGA who want to do them harm.
He then pivoted to his other favorite issue and that as the protector of “law and order” by writing in all caps: “THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!” Ahh, the convicted felon who was charged with numerous crimes for attempting a coup, violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice wants people to believe he’s all about fighting crime!
We also saw White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson post a graph Sunday night in the wake of this tragedy trying to tie the attack to Democrats. She wrote, “Democrats, calling your political opponents Nazis has consequences. Study: Left-wing terrorism climbs to 30-year high.”
But then something happened. Trump and his top aides stopped trying to weaponize this attack. And soon we learned why, the killer was a Trump supporter who had served in the military, was an avid hunter and lived in a rural area of Michigan. In other words, he was MAGA.
However, American corporate media –as opposed to international media—barely reported that the killer, 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford was a Trump supporter. Instead, U.S. media focus was everything but that fact. We learned that Sanford served in the U.S. Marines from 2004 to 2008 including being deployed to Iraq. We saw images of Sanford hunting, posing with animals he killed and as a U.S. Marine--all taken from social media.
Despite publishing those photos, they didn’t post another image of Sanford that was found on those very same social media platforms. And I only realized that Monday morning after I did a Google search of the shooter.
That is when I saw in U.K. publications that Sanford had posted online in September 2019 a photo of himself, his wife and child while he was wearing a Trump 2020 shirt. Sanford’s camouflage hunting type shirt had a huge logo that read at top “Re-elect Trump” featuring a caricature image of Trump wearing sunglasses and holding up a fist as if to punch someone. Below that were the words, “Make Liberals Cry Again.”
Other U.K. publications like The Guardian confirmed that the killer had a Trump sign outside his Michigan house. And another foreign publication, The Times of India, reported that the gunman’s mother, Brenda Walters-Sanford had recently shared a social media post celebrating Charlie Kirk and urging everyone to wear red on the upcoming anniversary of his birthday, October 14. (Later the NY Post published a photo of her post.)
All of this is why UK publications on Monday featured headlines that covered the killer’s ties to Trump. Britain’s The Independent headline read, “Iraq war veteran who opened fire on hundreds of Mormon worshippers pictured in Donald Trump shirt.” And as noted above, the UK’s The Telegraph ran this headline, “Mormon church gunman was Marine ‘who supported Trump.’”
Now, to be clear, I’m not saying the killer was motivated to wage his attack by Trump or because he was a Trump supporter. But this fact matters. Yet corporate media doesn’t want to suggest the killer was a Trump voter.
Why? Could it be they are afraid to report that since Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his show after saying the Charlie Kirk killer was MAGA?! Is it because executives at the U.S. media companies support Trump? In either case, we can’t trust American corporate media to deliver the truth.
And I will predict we will see a second round of less than honest coverage from U.S. corporate media in this case--and that is surrounding the motivation for the attack. On Monday morning, Trump’s head liar Karoline Leavitt was on Fox News where she shared that the attack was caused by the killer’s hatred of Mormons. Leavitt explained, “I understand based on my conversation with the FBI director, all they know right now is that this was an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith.”
This was backed up by Kris Johns, a city council candidate in Sanford’s hometown who spoke to the killer just last week when going door to door to get votes. Johns told the press that Sanford brought up Mormons and referred to them as “the antichrist.” Johns explained that Sanford spewed more anti-Mormon hate noting that, “It was very much standard anti-LDS [Mormon] talking points that you would find on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook.”
Will the media investigate what radicalized Sanford? Was it online videos? Was it fellow right wingers?
Keep in mind that Trump’s close ally Pastor Robert Jeffress—who is regular on Fox News—has long demonized Mormons as “a heresy from the pit of hell.” He has also accused Mormonism of being a “cult” that “leads people away from the true God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell.” And this view that Mormons are not real Christians continues to today among a swath of white Evangelicals.
Will the media devolve into whether Evangelicals who supported Trump are part of the reason this killer was radicalized? Of course not. It would make Trump and the right angry.
This is more of the reason we need to look beyond corporate media for the truth. You can look to foreign media outlets you trust. Or independent media. But corporate media is dead!
US media has been complicit all along if not actually rooting for MAGA.
We are in the middle of the biggest coup this country has ever faced and we have Schumer saying, id hoped the Republicans would side with the democrats. Wake up and smell the coffee, Chuck!! The republicans will never side with the democrats. How many times do you need to learn this lesson. I ran an addiction group last night, recognizing mistakes. Maybe Schumer and the rest of the lame Democrats should have sat in on it. We need progressive leadership if we ever want to see change in this country.