On Wednesday, August 27, Robin (formerly Robert) Westman, a 23-year-old transgender-identifying person, opened fire through the windows of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during a school Mass, killing two children and injuring 17 others. Westman, a former student, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, left behind writings and videos expressing hate toward multiple groups and an obsession with mass shooters.
“Minneapolis didn’t just let a massacre happen. It helped make it happen,” says Jill Savage, BlazeTV host of “Blaze News: The Mandate.”
And two people stand under a harsh glare of blame: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D).
Minneapolis’ reputation was already waning thanks to the George Floyd riots and its defund-the-police crusade when Tim Walz made the state a transgender sanctuary in 2023.
But even though this move has proved disastrous, Mayor Frey has doubled down in his support for Minneapolis’ transgender community. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said at a press conference on August 27. The next day, he reiterated the sentiment in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.
“Should we be talking about the trans community and making sure that they feel our love and support, or should we actually be looking at the Catholics right now — the ones that were actually killed yesterday in that church?” says Jill.
“This is the 42nd or maybe 43rd attack on an American Catholic church this year alone in the United States. It is over 520 attacks on Catholic churches here since 2020,” says Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford.
“They’ve been satanic; they’ve been anti-Catholic; they’ve been pro-abortion; they’ve been pro-trans.”
But they haven’t been that surprising.
“Minneapolis and Minnesota have had an extreme tolerance for evil and promoting evil,” says Bedford, condemning the state’s “permissive abortion laws” and policies allowing the state to take children away from parents who oppose “gender-affirming care.”
Bedford stresses the need to investigate how things like cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and mutilating surgeries impact a transgender-identifying individual’s behavior. Perhaps Westman was just a case of mental illness; perhaps there were drugs related to his gender transition that influenced his deadly actions. “I think that’s something that’s absolutely worth investigating,” he says.
As for Walz, Bedford says he “deserves condemnation for his anti-Catholic sentiments.” The woke governor denied Catholic schools’ requests for security funding in 2022 and 2023, despite an $18 billion state surplus, leaving nonpublic schools without access to safety grants provided to public schools. He also allegedly denied Catholic school students access to Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, preventing them from earning tuition-free college credits, despite their academic eligibility.
“These are the sorts of things that are going on in the United States and are being allowed by our politicians. … It’s soft on evil, and it allows it to fester,” he says.
To hear more, watch the episode above.
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