Though authorities continue to investigate potential motives for the deadly shooting at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Sen. Ron Johnson is wasting no time in declaring a scapegoat: schools.
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Appearing on a panel for the far-right, Hitler-quoting activist group Moms for Liberty on Tuesday, the second day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the Wisconsin lawmaker fielded a question on governmental failures, including the apparent Secret Service lapses that allowed the would-be assassin a clear shot at Trump. (The candidate’s right ear was wounded, while two spectators were injured and a third was killed.) Johnson admitted that we had more to learn yet about the 20-year-old gunman, who was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper after opening fire from a rooftop.
However, that didn’t stop Johnson from spinning a narrative that conveniently suited the event. “This was a loner, in probably a large school, being bullied all the time,” Johnson said, alluding to interviews with shooter’s former classmates who said he was routinely picked on . (Others who knew him disputed the idea that he was singled out for abuse.)
“I’m hoping that one result from Moms for Liberty,” the senator said, “is we start moving away from these massive, large schools, and we start moving more toward, you know, the old one-room school.” The comment drew a smattering of applause from the audience.
Founded to fight Covid-19 safety measures in classrooms, Moms for Liberty has advocated for a “ mass exodus ” from the U.S. public school system in favor of a homeschooling model. For years they have antagonized school boards and educators across the country in order to purge academic curricula of material on LGBTQ rights and racial inclusivity, seeking to ban books, prevent trans athletes from competing with others of their gender, and back politicians sympathetic to their causes. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes them as an “ extremist ” organization.
The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, went to a public high school in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
In his remarks Tuesday, Johnson did not mention the security issues at the Trump rally, nor the gunman’s AR-15 rifle, which had been legally purchased by his father. And he only glancingly referred to “the vitriol in our politics.” Instead he used his time on stage to make the case for the agenda set by Moms of Liberty: “Used to be an oddity that people would homeschool,” Johnson said. “Now more people are doing so, because during Covid, parents are looking over the shoulder of their kids, and they’re seeing these large schools — these large bureaucracies — [are] completely out of control and unaccountable.”
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Johnson also made sure to throw some blame at the internet, which he said led to a “lack of socialization,” and “the vitriol on social media that also can ostracize and bully children.” He concluded that in both education and government more broadly, it’s “really about, from my standpoint, regaining our communities at local level.”
Known for spewing misinformation on everything from Covid-19 to the results of the 2020 election to wind turbines, which he claimed last year are “ killing the whales ,” Johnson has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and has staunchly opposed gun control reforms while in office. In the aftermath of the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead, he argued school shootings were the result of indoctrinating students with “ wokeness .”
Elsewhere at the RNC, a Wisconsin-based vendor called the U.S. Concealed Carry Association is looking to attract members with a promotional giveaway: sign up and you could win an AR-15 . A representative told Rolling Stone described the weapon as “a tool to defend ourselves.”
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