Former United President Barack Obama on Monday released a statement after the massacres in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio that claimed the lives of 31 innocent victims.
In a statement delivered on his Twitter account, he called on Americans to reject political leaders who speak racist, hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric.
“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people,” Obama said Monday in comments posted on social media. “Such language isn’t new — it’s been at the root of most human tragedy throughout history, here in America and around the world.”
Obama also encouraged public officials to be more accountable on changing gun laws in the country to avoid such tragedies that causes fear to everyone.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump issued a very robotic statement condemning the series of horrific shootings and even pointing out the blame to violent video games, mental illness, and the Internet.
“Mental illness and hate pull the trigger, not the gun,” Trump said while speaking at the White House on Monday.
While Obama didn’t drop any names, it was obvious that his comments were for Trump whose rhetoric has sparked violence from “troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy.”
The former president also added that no one should tolerate public leaders on spewing languages that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalized racist sentiments and even calling immigrants a “threat to life.”
Obama believes that such language is the root of most human tragedy, slavery, Jim Crow, the Holocaust, the genocide in Rweanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
