Music

Morrissey slams Trump's 'anti-gay, pro-gun' response to Orlando shooting

by Jeremy Mersereau

Writing on the Moz fansite True To You, Morrissey himself has hit out at Donald Trump and the billionaire presumptive presidential nominee’s measured, well-thought-out views on the Orlando club shooting that left 49 people dead and 53 injured on Sunday. Just kidding, Trump’s comments are insane.

Morrissey took on Trump’s suggestion that the violence in Orlando could have been avoided if clubgoers had been armed, which Trump expressed during a CNN interview on Monday. “This, of course, is his way of avoiding any words of support to the Orlando gay community (it is their own fault for going into a nightclub without hand grenades),” Morrissey wrote, adding that ” Donald Thump [sic] would therefore probably claim that the massacred children of Sandy Hook would still be alive today if only they’d had the common sense to carry sawn-off shotguns to school. The Thump response to Orlando is therefore anti-gay and pro-gun possession.”

Morrissey also criticizes the usual media response to the tragedy (“Why show the gunman’s face? Nobody needs to see it”), before switching gears to talk about the U.S. presidential race. “The larger disaster is the two leading faces in the presidential race, as the world prepares to shake its head in disbelief when the new president is named… Surely this is not 2016 America?”

Like other seminal musicians who’ve had recent run-ins with Trump, Morrissey expresses his support for Bernie Sanders. “Bernie Sanders has been pushed out by the media because the idea of a self-made man who does not crave international war is completely alien to such as Fox News,” Moz says, also characterizing Hillary Clinton as “the face and voice of pooled money” who will “repay the established elite with whatever they want if she is elected.”

Morrissey’s clearly a dyed-in-the-imitation-wool Bernie bro, as he calls the November election date  “a day that only Bernie Sanders could have saved, had he been allowed his rightful share of media support”. I think I just figured out who “MeatIsMurder1985” is on r/SandersforPresident.

Read Morrissey’s entire post here.