I’m sitting in a gay café in Washington DC. Opposite me, a lesbian couple are hugging and kissing, trying to console each other about the massacre of 53 people in a gay club in Orlando last night — the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11. This weekend was supposed to be a big gay carnival. There was a huge gay pride march along this street yesterday, with thousands of people waving rainbow flags, bringing their children. President Obama repeatedly endorsed the ‘Love is Love’ campaign. And now, in Florida, a American Muslim maniac kills 53 people — and why? Might it be connected to what his father says: that he saw two men kissing in Miami and was upset? Or was he a well-trained jihadist, who was (as he claimed in a phone call to 911 before) a member of the Islamic State?
The splits in American opinion are already coming out. The talking heads on the left-leaning TV channels this morning immediately started to attack America’s gun laws. On Fox News, they attacked the left for not tackling the Muslim extremism in their midst. And though it’s crude to discuss it at this stage, when the dead have yet to be named, people want to know how this will affect the presidential election. Will it help Donald Trump and his robust rhetoric on the issue of Islamic immigration? (The killer was born in the USA, but we should not expect The Donald to make that point). Will it ‘feed the culture of hate?’ as one of the lesbians across from me was suggesting?
Well there’s no fear of that in progressive, exquisitely pc DC. But the incident could help Trump, who has had a bad two weeks, and needed a major story to distract attention from his suddenly spluttering campaign. Trump won’t ignore this opportunity. As he humble-bragged on Twitter, ‘Appreciate the congrats for being touch on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats. I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart!’
But will he double down on his temporary ban on all Muslims entering America? Trump knows that backlash his brand, so it seems likely he will try to say something outrageous. Or will he try to be dignified and presidential? His tweets so far suggest he is showing a degree of restraint. But his campaign hasn’t got to where it has by buttoning The Donald’s lip. Perhaps he will see a chance to win voters among the gay community, as Marine Le Pen has done through her anti-Islamist rhetoric in France.
If you think it is too cynical to discuss such politicking in the wake of a tragedy, you may be right. But rest assured The Donald and Hillary will be frantically considering how best to exploit the horror, and how to hurt each other with the public anger inevitable after what is the worst mass shooting in American history. The good news is that no matter how divided America is — politically, culturally, geographically — it remains unified by the belief that killing people because of who they are is evil and unAmerican.
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