Mike Pence’s jarringly tone-deaf response to the Las Vegas shooting
In the hours after the terrorist mass shooting in Las Vegas, it wasn’t surprising to see Donald Trump provide virtually no leadership and barely a sense of propriety. While Mike Pence is at least as much of an ideological extremist, he demonstrated in the past that he at least knows how to pretend to sound reasonable when it’s called for. But this time around, Pence’s response to the Las Vegas shooting is nothing short of jarringly tone-deaf.
Mike Pence tweeted a few reasonable-sounding things on Monday, as one would have expected. But then we were reminded of why he’s every bit as much of a cartoon villain as Trump is. As of late Monday night, Pence still hadn’t bothered to cancel a partisan fundraiser scheduled for Tuesday, which is set to take place in Phoenix – just one state over from the still unfolding Las Vegas tragedy and aftermath (link). Worse, Pence is set to use the event to push for tax cuts for the wealthy, which is the last kind of message America needs right now.
But hey, nothing comes between Mike Pence and his billionaire owners and the money that flows freely between them, right? Now that Pence is being called out for it, perhaps he’ll end up canceling the fundraiser at the last minute. But even if so, he’ll only have done it because he was pressured into it, and not because it occurred to him to do the right – or even the reasonable looking – thing.
Meanwhile Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday, which is still in dire straits after Hurricane Maria, thanks in no small part to Trump’s belated and utterly failed relief response. Trump will likely find a way to botch the visit and further insult the Puerto Rican people. Mike Pence may be counting on using that embarrassing spectacle as cover for his own embarrassingly tone-deaf fundraiser.
