James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, has condemned political violence, but he hasn’t yet addressed the news that members of his church reportedly wish that Thomas Matthew Crooks had been “more successful” when he opened fire at Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, two years ago.
Rev. Babs Miller, a chaplain at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, told an undercover investigator that “we still have people in this church that wish that that young man had not just nicked [Trump’s] ear, but been more successful.”
What the Video Does Not Show
To be clear, the video does not suggest that Miller is endorsing this view. Judging by the undercover investigator’s reaction, Miller noted it as a negative fact about the church’s membership.
Talarico himself has condemned political violence. After the attempt on Trump’s life at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in April, he said, “Political violence is unacceptable in every form, and we must continue to call it out wherever it rears its ugly head.”
Yet he appears not to have called it out in response to the Babs Miller video.
A News Blindspot
The fact that Talarico’s fellow churchmembers have expressed such a sentiment seems newsworthy.
Yet the story received very little attention outside of conservative journalism. I only found it by checking the news “blindspots” revealed by Ground News.
This lack of coverage seems rather notable.
Had a prominent Republican candidate been associated with a church where members reportedly wished Barack Obama’s would-be assassin had been “more successful,” it is difficult to imagine the story receiving so little attention.
Sure, left-leaning outlets would be the major sources to cover it, but news outlets in the center would also run the story. The church would have to respond, as would the Republican candidate. Conservative outlets would also ultimately cover the story, focusing on the Republican candidate’s rightful condemnation of political violence.
Yet the Talarico story has had all the impact of a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear. Without Ground News, even I would never have stumbled upon it, and when I tried to search to find the story again, it was legitimately hard to track it down.
I found this story using Ground News, the sponsor of today’s post.
Ground News is a website and app that aims to make reading the news easier and more data-driven. It analyzes thousands of news articles daily, revealing the bias, reliability, and ownership of the outlets that cover each story.
Ground News’s blindspot feed, which shows stories disproportionately covered or ignored by one side of the political spectrum, highlighted this story.
Despite the relevance of remarks from a pastor at James Talarico’s church, most legacy media sources ignored the story. Ground News’s highlighting the stories that fall into ideological blindspots helped me discover news that hadn’t gotten the traction it deserved.
I am partnering with Ground News because of its dedication to exposing bias and educating readers and subscribers.
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The Woketopus reached out to Talarico’s campaign and to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, but neither responded to a request for comment. It doesn’t seem Talarico or the church has felt much pressure to respond to this news.
Americans should not normalize talk about political assassination, whether the target is Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joe Biden, or anyone else. The Butler assassination attempt rightly shocked the country, in large part because Americans instinctively reject the idea that violence is the way to handle political disagreements.
FROM MY DESK
📚Reading: “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis
If God is good and wants people to be happy, why do we suffer? This problem, variously known as “theodicy” or “the problem of evil,” is an apparent contradiction in Christianity, but C.S. Lewis does a fantastic job explaining how the Bible addresses it. His chapter on heaven is particularly fantastic.
📰Worth your time: Make Education Roman Again by Ryan Hammill and Pavlos Papadopoulos
The peaceful transition of power to a fairly elected representative is the beating heart of our republican form of government.
That’s why these remarks are newsworthy: not because they can be attributed to Talarico or because they prove anything about the church as a whole, but because they reveal the temptation of political violence, and present an opportunity for both sides of the political spectrum to emphatically reject it.
If Talarico truly believes Americans must condemn political violence “wherever it rears its ugly head,” then this seems like an obvious moment for him to do so.
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