Harris on El Paso shooting: Trump didn’t ‘pull the trigger’ but has been ‘tweeting out the ammunition’

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said President Trump “didn’t ‘pull the trigger” at a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which 22 people were killed, but has been “tweeting out the ammunition.”

“We also need a a president of the United States who understands that one of her greatest powers is to use this microphone in a way that is not about beating people down but lifting people up,” she said at an anti-gun violence forum after referring to “the hate that we are also seeing being displayed, which is manifesting itself in lethal proportion like what we saw in El Paso.”{mosads}

“People say to me ‘did Donald Trump cause those, those folks to be killed?’ Well no, of course he didn’t pull the trigger, but he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition,” Harris added. 

Harris’s comments at the forum hosted by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, follow a pair of mass shootings last weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. 

The Texas shooter allegedly posted a manifesto online warning of a “Hispanic invasion.” The incident has caused Trump’s immigration rhetoric to come under scrutiny. 

Harris this week stopped short of calling Trump a white supremacist, but said that he “empowers white supremacists.”

Harris is among two dozen people competing for the 2020 Democratic nomination, several of whom also spoke at the Iowa forum on Saturday.