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Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos blamed for newspaper shooting after anti-media comments

Comments by Milo Yiannopoulos and President Donald Trump caught attention online.

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Andrew Wyrich

Comments by Milo Yiannopoulos and President Donald Trump's anti-media comments have come up after the Capital Gazette shooting.

On Tuesday afternoon, a gunman opened fire at the offices of the Capital Gazette, a local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, an hour outside Washington, D.C. Reporters at the Gazette said the shooter shot through a glass window at the office and reloaded his weapon at least once. Five people were killed and multiple people were injured.

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While authorities have not released a motive, the attack—the 154st mass shooting in 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive—came in the wake of incendiary and anti-media comments made by President Donald Trump and prominent conservative personalities.

At a campaign-style rally in South Carolina this week, Trump reignited his “enemy of the people” moniker for the media,, which he first used in 2017. Elsewhere this week, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos told the Observer that he couldn’t wait for “vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”

Within the minutes of the attack, people online pointed out the timing of their comments in relation to the shooting.

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In response, Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook that he blamed the Observer and the Daily Beast for publishing his “vigilante death squads” quote—claiming it was a “joke.”

“If there turns out to be any dimension to this crime related to my private, misreported remarks, the responsibility for that lies squarely and wholly with the Beast and the Observer for drumming up fake hysteria about a private joke, and with the verified liberals who pretended they thought I was serious,” he wrote around 4pm on Thursday.

However, he had posted the headlines to Instagram. The company removed them before the shooting, claiming they violated its terms of service.

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https://twitter.com/DavisOliverR/status/1012161112790503424

As news of the attack came to light, the White House said in a statement that “our thoughts and prayers are with all that are affected.” Around 5pm ET on Thursday, Trump said his “thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families” regarding the Capital Gazette shooting.

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For some, Trump’s tweet rang hollow.

Trump has been criticized for the rhetoric he uses to describe the press, with some experts believing it could lead to an escalation of violence. CNN’s Jim Acosta was on the receiving end of vitriol from those in attendance of the South Carolina rally.

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That said, Fox News pundit Sean Hannity blamed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for the shooting in light of her comments earlier this week where she called on supporters to confront members of the Trump administration in public places. “I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really Maxine?” Hannity said, according to Media Matters for America.

No motive for the attack has been released by authorities, but the troubling response from far-right trolls, as seen on Twitter, 4chan, and the pro-Trump Reddit forum r/The_Donald reveals the damaging effect Trump’s war on the media has had.

https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1012431317366202369

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One thing’s clear at this point: Regardless of what the motive is, the damage is already done.

Disclosure: The Daily Dot acquired The Kernel, a publication founded by Milo Yiannopoulos, in 2014.  

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The Daily Dot