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Rick Santorum believes he knows the real reason Trump isn't tweeting about the Quebec attack
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Rick Santorum believes he knows the real reason Trump isn't tweeting about the Quebec attack

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania, believes President Donald Trump has refused to comment on last month's mosque shooting in Quebec City because it goes against his narrative.

"It should not be a shock to anybody that presidents — anybody is not gonna tweet out things that don’t necessarily fit with the narrative that the administration is trying to put forward," Santorum, who campaigned against Trump for the presidency, said on CNN Thursday.

Santorum tied Trump's dismissal of the mosque attack, which was carried out by a man who has expressed anti-Muslim sentiments online, to former President Barack Obama's decision to issue frequent statements on white-on-black shootings, but not black-on-white violence.

"The previous president — when there were attacks by anybody who shot someone black, the president would be out there with some sort of statement to talk about it," the ex-senator said. "If it was the reverse, you never heard anything. So there is a narrative that the White House tries to drive on issues that they care about."

When CNN's Jim Scuitto pushed back against that claim, noting that there were plenty of times Obama spoke out about violence that didn't involve black people, Santorum clarified: "When there was white-on-black crime, the president was all over it, and when it was a black-on-white crime, that was simply not the case."

In fact, during his presidency, it became quite commonplace for Obama to issue statement on police-involved shootings of black men. The most famous intense was perhaps when, during his campaign for re-election, the former president said, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," referring to the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager in Sanford, Florida.

The assailant was George Zimmerman, a fair-skinned Hispanic man who was serving as a neighborhood watch volunteer. He was ultimately acquitted of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

CNN's Dana Bash agreed that Trump's decision not to tweet or comment on the mosque shooting could just be a matter of White House strategy, she went on to assert: "This is about what is right and wrong when you’re the President of the United States."

Angela Rye, a liberal commentator on CNN, condemned Santorum's comments, saying it is "horrible for us to tarnish Barack Obama’s legacy."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about Trump's silence on the Quebec matter Thursday, when a reporter wondered why the president didn't comment on the shooting, but chose to weigh in on clothing store Nordstrom's decision to pull his daughter's brand from its stores.

Spicer, clearly frustrated, pointed to the fact that he talked "about the president expressing his condolences" during a press briefing several days ago. "Why are you asking why he didn't do it when I literally stood here and did it," he charged.

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