Trump: Las Vegas Strip Shooting Was ‘An Act Of Pure Evil’

President Donald Trump makes a statement about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017 in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump makes a statement about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017 at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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President Donald Trump on Monday said a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 50 people dead and hundreds injured was “an act of pure evil.”

“My fellow Americans, we are joined together today in sadness, shock and grief,” Trump said in a statement from the White House.

He called the shooting, the most deadly in U.S. history, “an act of pure evil” and thanked the Las Vegas police department and first responders for the “miraculous” speed “with which they acted.”

Police on Monday identified Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old white man from Mesquite, Nevada, as the shooter who opened fire on a music festival on the Las Vegas strip, killing 50 people and injuring hundreds.

“Hundreds of our fellow citizens are now mourning the sudden loss of a loved one, a parent, a child, a brother or sister. We cannot fathom their pain, we cannot imagine their loss,” he said. “To the families of the victims, we are praying for you and we are here for you.”

Trump said he ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff and announced that he will visit Las Vegas on Wednesday “to meet with law enforcement, first responders and the families of the victims.”

“In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one, and it always has,” he said. “May God bless the souls of the lives that are lost, may God give us the grace of healing and may God provide the grieving families with strength to carry on.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Clearly, citizen heroes now need to open carry RPGs to thwart future attacks and help us feel safer.

  2. Nope. It was an act of pure white NRA ideology and just “watering the tree of liberty”.

  3. Avatar for erik_t erik_t says:

    “Pure evil” is a great linguistic construct. By assigning it, you don’t have to give any further thought to motivations, circumstances, what might cause a person to act out in such an appalling way, how society might have facilitated that acting out. How a somewhat different society, a different set of circumstances, might not have produced such a terrible outcome. How we might change our society, change the circumstances our people live in, to reduce the frequency with which such events will happen in the future.

    'Cuz it’s, like, evil, man.

    (Trump by no means invented this one. It’s been with us since at least 1946.)

  4. That was like listening to Jay-Z in slow motion with all the rests and stops.

  5. No. You don’t get to blame God or Satan. The carnage was predictable. Perhaps not the location or the precise body count. Now what are you going to do to mitigate this fully predictable barbarism?

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