Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace that the Orlando terror attack was mostly done because of a hatred for the LGBT and Latino communities.
Lynch said, "It's both an act of terror and an act of hate."She continued, "Clearly this was inspired by terrorist ideology, but it was an attack directed against the LGBT community and the Latino community."
She also told Wallace this, "Now, one of the things that we have talked about before is our concern about homegrown extremists -- individuals who consumed this radical violent ideology and then act on it."
Republicans refuse to discuss the problem of home grown terrorism in America since they believe it doesn't help them in the general election.
The CIA reports they haven't found a connection between Manteen and ISIS:
The Central Intelligence Agency chief has not been “able to uncover any link” between Orlando killer Omar Mateen and the Islamic State, despite Mateen’s stated allegiance to the jihadist group during Sunday’s LGBT nightclub massacre.
Not that that matters to the Republican party.
Ever since that horrific day, conservatives have been out in front on the airwaves and in print trying to deny that the LGBT community had anything to do with the shooting.
Erick Erickson went as far as saying that identifying this as an attack on the gay community was a dividing line in America.
Within twelve hours though, the way the media chose to report on the event was that this was a tragedy in the gay community. That is an unnecessary dividing line. The terrorist attack was a tragedy in the American community.
Making this about gay rights or the gay community or just Orlando creates an unnecessary dividing line. The United States has come under attack, but the American left would rather blame us than the enemy.
It would have been nice if Republicans had always considered the gay community part of real America, but instead they've vilified them in every way possible. And now they've used this tragedy to find another way to shun them.
As Think Progress noted:
The Republican National Committee’s original statement on Sunday in response to the shooting included the statement, “Violence against any group of people simply for their lifestyle or orientation has no place in America or anywhere else.”
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) took it a step further, openly denying that Pulse was a gay club mere hours before blocking an LGBT protections amendment from advancing in his committee.
Owen Jones, who writes for The Guardian and is gay, actually walked off of a Sky News television interview because the host kept insisting that the Orlando shooting shouldn’t be called an attack on LGBT people. He thought it instead should be framed as an attack “against human beings” and “the freedom of all people to try to enjoy themselves.”
