Neither of the two frontrunners in the Texas Democratic Senate primary addressed concerns about Islamic terrorism in the wake of a deadly shooting on Sunday morning in Austin that left three dead and more than a dozen others wounded.
Instead, just a day ahead of a competitive Senate primary, James Talarico and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, focused on the effectiveness of prayer and delivered a warning against stereotyping immigrants.
“I believe in the power of prayer. I believe prayer changes lives. But there is something profoundly cynical in asking God to solve a problem we’re not willing to solve ourselves,” Talarico said in an interview with MS Now.
“We prayed, and God sent lawmakers with commonsense gun safety proposals like universal background checks, red flag laws,” he added, in comments he’s also made on the campaign trail in the wake of the weekend shooting.
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Crockett, for her part, warned viewers on TikTok against extrapolating conclusions about the violence to minorities and immigrants.
“Listen, every time there’s some crazy situation like this, black folks sit around and say, ‘Oh, I hope they’re not black,’ because we know that’s going to be an additional target on our backs. We know that the immigrant community was probably holding their breath and saying, ‘Oh, I hope it wasn’t an immigrant.’”
But Crockett and Talarico did not address any mention of Islamic terrorism or whether it might pose an additional risk to Americans in light of recent U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Their silence on the topic drew condemnation from at least one GOP observer.
“Absolutely disgusting stuff. James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett are blaming hardworking Texans who go to church and lawfully own guns, instead of the radical Islamic terrorist who committed this heinous act,” Zach Kraft, an RNC spokesman, said.
Ndiaga Diagne, 53, opened fire at a bar scene in Austin while wearing a hoodie with the words “property of Allah” emblazoned on the front. While his specific motives remain unclear, police searching his home with a warrant later discovered an Iranian flag and photos of Islamic leaders.
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Diagne was shot dead by local police.
The shooting comes on the heels of strikes carried out by the U.S. and Israel on Saturday that targeted Iran’s military leadership and killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a press event on Monday, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said local police had invited federal authorities to the scene to investigate the attack as a possible act of terrorism.
“We’re looking at the totality of this. We see these indicators, we’re thinking about events and what’s occurring in the country as well. The motives – all of those things, that’s what the investigation is about right now,” Davis said.
Asked how lawmakers could prevent attacks in the future, Crockett said she believes a majority of shooters in the U.S. are White.
“If I was to give you the facts as to who the shooters have been in these mass shootings, I can guarantee you — the vast majority of them have been White, male and homegrown. But we don’t see them taking any action on that,” Crockett said.
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Crockett did not explain how she would use that insight as a senator to prevent shootings in the future.
“We need to actually do something about guns. Don’t sit there and say that it’s the immigrants. Maybe it’s your lax laws when it comes to guns,” she added.
Talarico said the U.S. should prevent “dangerous people from entering the country.”
“Dangerous people should not be allowed to get guns,” Talarico added, doubling down on his red-flag proposals, policies that aim to screen would-be gun buyers against stiffer background checks.
Neither Talarico’s nor Crockett’s campaign replied to a request for comment.
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It’s been a very different take from longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, the top three candidates in the competitive and combustible Republican Senate primary.
“This is what happened when you had four years of an open border. This is what happens when 20 million people enter your country illegally. You have no idea what they are. This is what happens when you have a derelict of duty at the top of the ticket with leadership. And this is why President Trump, quite frankly, got elected. He got elected because he wanted to fix the immigration system,” Hunt said Monday night in a Fox News Digital interview in suburban Houston.
Hunt, a West Point graduate who flew Apache helicopters in combat and who is a rising MAGA star in his second term in Congress, argued that “we have allowed animals like this man that are arbitrarily murdered my fellow Texans and my fellow Americans. We let them in this country without properly vetting, because we had an open border, and it was a complete utter disaster to fix this problem. That’s exactly what President Trump is actively trying to do, and this is why we have to double down on our policies, but to find these people, deport them and get rid of them.”
Paxton, speaking with Fox News Digital in Waco a couple of hours earlier, said that authorities “have to do a better job vetting people when they come here.”
“There’s no system that’s perfect. If we have immigration, there’s going to be no system that’s perfect. We do need to do a better job of vetting people, and Congress is going to have to figure out how to do that,” Paxton emphasized.
“I think that the burden on the system has been all the illegal immigration, which makes it harder for law enforcement to keep track of everyone,” Paxton said. “We’ve got so many people here that are from other countries. It’s very difficult for law enforcement, with the resources that we have to keep track of everybody.”
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Asked about the shooting, Cornyn said in a Fox News Digital interview in San Antonio on Sunday, “What it does emphasize to me is the importance of vetting people before they come across the border.”
“Part of the problem is that the Biden administration, for four years, had open border policies and let who knows what into the country,” Cornyn charged. “This isn’t about people continuing to come into the country, because we know President Trump has secured the border. This is about what happens with people already here.”
He said the shooting was an example of “what happens when people become radicalized.”
