2/2. KEK
While most of the post-debate conversation on television focused on other aspects of the event, Trump was clearly unhappy that more people were not focusing on Walz’s gaffe. “Why aren’t the after shows talking about the fact that Walz said, ‘I’m friends with school shooters,’” Trump wrote around midnight on Tuesday.
But across the right-wing ecosystem of talking heads and pundits, the claim that Walz was friends with school shooters quickly took hold.
“Calling it right now but Tim Walz saying he's “friends with school shooters” will be the #1 thing remembered about this debate,” Jack Posobiec, the far-right troll and Pizzagate promoter who was part of the official Trump campaign war room for the debate, wrote on Telegram. “It's the 'eating the cats' of the VP debate.”
“Is it normal to befriend school shooters?” Charlie Kirk, the founder of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA group, wrote on Telegram.
Posobiec also posted multiple memes about the situation, including one showing Walz superimposed into a video of an actual school shooting. He also posted a video recorded by Chaya Raichik, who runs the hate-filled anti-LGBTQ account LibsofTikTok and was also in the GOP’s debate war room.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and close ally of Trump, opened his post-debate show discussing the incident, claiming it “raises a lot of other questions” and failing to account for the fact that Walz misspoke.
Hundreds of other right-wing accounts on X posted clips of Walz’s comment without any context, dozens of them racking up millions of views on their posts. Others posted a clip of Walz after the debate getting pizza with his wife, when a reporter asked: "Can you clarify what you meant when you said you became friends with school shooters?” Walz refused to answer the question.
Shannon Watts, the founder of gun control activist group Moms Demand Action, hit back at the disingenuous attacks on Walz, outlining his achievements in helping to introduce gun control laws in Minnesota in recent years.
“I’ve had the honor of knowing Gov. Tim Walz for years and have had a front-row seat to his compassion and courage on the issue of gun safety,” Watts wrote on X. “He didn’t just listen to the Moms Demand Action volunteers he met with—he kept his commitment to make Minnesota safer.”
Watts pointed out that along with the introduction of the red-flag law and universal background checks, Walz’s administration had ushered in “one of the largest investments in community-based violence-prevention programs of any state to date” along with “legislation to prohibit automatic-weapon-modification devices and to collect gun-crime data.”
Watts also attacked Vance’s comments on gun safety, pointing out that he recently said that school shootings were a “fact of life” the people “have to accept” in America. During the debate, Vance variously blamed migrants, mental health, and school buildings themselves for the high rates of gun violence, while dismissing the ease of access to gun ownership.
“Vance says instead of passing stronger gun laws, we should just turn schools into fortresses guarded by armed police to protect them from gunmen,” wrote Watts. “He neglects to mention that over 80% of school shooters are students, not strangers who walk in out of the shadows.”
(Maybe Walz should not be candidate for VP, if he admits he misspeaks a lot.)
https://www.wired.com/story/vp-debate-tim-walz-friends-school-shooters/