“We’re all people of religion, but there are evil people. And we have to confront that. I just give my love and hope to the family of the young woman who was stabbed this morning or last night in Charlotte by a madman.”
—President Trump yesterday in remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., referring to the horrific random knife murder in Charlotte that was not considered newsworthy by the Axis media because it didn’t involve a gun, which would have been exploited to make more gun control demands, and didn’t involve a white person killing a black one, which would have bolstered the “America is racist” narrative.
I want to note that an “Ethics quote” is not the same as an ethical quote, but rather a statement that raises ethical issues that are worth pondering. This one raises many. Such as…
1. As one wag on Instapundit said this morning, “I guess now the legacy media will have to cover the story.” And, I hope, try to explain why an event with so many hot button issue touch points was deemed unworthy of national news for two weeks.
2. Issues include Black on white crime. Democrat-run big city violence as Trump raises the issue of federal force bolstering law enforcement. Lack of security on public transportation. Society’s handling of the mentally ill. The victim was a legal Ukrainian refugee, as the Left’s support of the Ukrainian (hopeless) war continues in the absence of logic and reality. The social activist-driven revolving door system of arrests, releases and mild or no punishment to reduce “over-incarceration.” And more…
3. It has come to this: the news media is so biased, segmented, agenda-driven and untrustworthy that we have to depend on the President of the United States to get reports on important national developments and current events. That’s not his job, but journalists aren’t doing their job.
4. I’m waiting for some news source to make its story about how Trump “lied” in this instance. The woman wasn’t killed “this morning or last night,” she was killed on August 22. Hey, it’s old news! These are the kinds of careless misstatements that the Axis and Trump Deranged cannot resist citing.
Along the same lines, if President Trump is religious in any way, I’ll eat my foot…
5. No Democratic party leader or elected official outside of North Carolina has bothered to comment on the murder. After all, it runs counter to so many progressive talking points and agenda items.
6. Can people be both “evil” and mentally ill? Clarence Darrow didn’t believe they could; the law also takes that position in some cases. Under the law, one has to know that what one is doing is wrong to be convicted of a crime under mens rea. A murderer is not evil and hence not guilty if he or she cannot stop themselves from committing a crime. Others argue that the Charlotte killer was clearly determined to kill the innocent woman, committed an evil act, and therefore is evil whether he is mentally ill or not. Others argue that anyone committing such an act is by definition mentally ill.
7. Note that Trump didn’t say the victim was allegedly stabbed by a madman who can actually be seen stabbing the woman on camera footage. Good. Oh, now wait a minute: he’s innocent until proven guilty! Maybe the stabbing was a special effect to advertise a movie and the dead woman was in on it and isn’t really dead….
Ethics Alarms 
“Along the same lines, if President Trump is religious in any way, I’ll eat my foot…”
And I’ll help you.
What, is that with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
Would that be helping him flex his foot to his mouth, or are you going to compete with Spuds for a toe?
Never rival a dog for its food. You won’t win.
The social activist-driven revolving door system of arrests, releases and mild or no punishment to reduce “over-incarceration.” And more…
The only people they want to incarcerate are lawful gun owners and those who disagree with them.
The only crimes the Dem leadership and spokesholes whine about are school shootings- and stealing the 2016 election.
DOT Secretary Duffy just warned Charlotte that they could loose federal funding over the train murder.
I have been traveling to Singapore and Tokyo, and using the metro system in these cities is an entirely different experience than taking the subway in New York City. First, I have not seen any public vagrancy in these cities. Second, turnstile jumping is technically impossible, as there are no turnstiles but floor to ceiling doors to enter the platform. Third, you cannot jump or fall onto the tracks as the platform is enclosed, and the doors to the trains only open when the train is at the platform.
This means that there is no way in Tokyo and Singapore that vagrants can even get on the metro. There are many ways safety on public transportation can be improved; but we should not overlook technology and architecture.
Number 4. Those who seek and obtain high office are duty-bound to be careful with the facts.
Biden’s physician, on February 28, 2024, stated that Biden “remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency”. We know that to be a lie.
The Trump White House in April 2025 stated that Trump was in “excellent health” and “fully fit” to serve as commander-in-chief. Many believe that to be a lie.
So, just one more in a never-ending cascade of “careless misstatements”, right? Nothing to see here; move along.
Yeah, right.
I view this as one of your infamous Devil’s Advocate outburst. We know Trump isn’t careful with facts, but in this case, he’s more excusable than usual. He reasonably assumed that the event in question just occurred because he had only learned of it, and even he couldn’t imagine that the MSM would bury such an event for two weeks. You know this was a careless misstatement because the actual time of the murder is a greater indictment of the media than what he assumed to be the case.
Of course it’s excusable to include serious errors in a speech. It may look like you don’t know what you’re talking about, but, that’s okay, provided, of course, that you do it a lot so it is expected and normal for you. That way, it cannot be tied to mental deficiency; it’s just an innocent condition that affects the way words come out, kind of like stuttering.
And, ignorance is perfectly acceptable if you can show that the MSM, untrustworthy as they are, did not give you the correct information. More acceptable, even, because the MSM is more guilty.
Here, it is not even worth noting that he tried to tie the murder to immigration, never mind who actually was the immigrant. After all, it is well known (well, to him and some ardent followers at least) that immigrants are the worst people.
Yeah, I do have a contrarian attitude at times. But, I also expect high-level leaders to be more than minimally aware of and careful of the accuracy of what they read off the teleprompter.
I also expect high-level leaders to be more than minimally aware of and careful of the accuracy of what they read off the teleprompter.
Why ever would you assume that he was reading off a teleprompter? He’s not Biden, he can form complete sentences all by himself. Yeah, he probably should know that this murder didn’t just happen, but had he been using a teleprompter it sure would have said the murder happened two weeks ago.
Not quite an assumption — the teleprompters are clearly visible in an image released by the White House. Of course, that does not prove that he was reading off them. So, my comment is more presumption than assumption.
And, whether or not that comment came from the teleprompter, I am not as willing to excuse that sort of carelessness as some are since I don’t believe the frequency of careless statements serves as an excuse.
JM: 6. Can people be both “evil” and mentally ill? YES! and all other perturbations of this.
JM: Others argue that anyone committing such an act is by definition mentally ill.
I disagree with this form of retrospective diagnosing (where murder is ipso facto is considered to be evidence of mental illness, in the absence of any other evidence of same) and also find this practice to be interesting from a psychological perspective.
What people generally mean is “I don’t see how the murderer benefited from doing this” and/or “this sort of murder is not one that I can imagine myself / have already fantasized about / committing.”
Note that the “must be crazy” crowd don’t diagnose professional assassins as mentally ill, or people who kill their spouses in hopes of a financial windfall (or to clear the decks for a preferred paramour without the messiness of a divorce) or gang members who kill members of other gangs in territorial wars, or lovers who kill a partner who was cheating on them. Or Luigi killing the United Healthcare poobah.
There is actually a fascinating book by David Buss entitled The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill that I recommend on the topic of the sorts of murder fantasies that are (it turns out) almost ubiquitous among normal citizens.
BTW psychopathy is not considered a mental illness but a personality disorder. It refers to someone who is indifferent to moral norms (amoral rather than immoral) and lacks empathy.
Normally mental illness (like physical illness) is seen as something that causes undesirable symptoms in the person so afflicted. However, the harms of psychopathy are externalized — other people suffer, not the person with the personality disorder / variant.
In other times and places a fellow like this might have been sent off to the military — psychopathy can be a real asset in that setting (which may well be why this personality variant evolved and was maintained in the population). The hazard is that psychopaths cannot be controlled using the typical human toolkit for behavioral shaping (fear, shame, guilt, dominance displays) — this is how they were noticed in the first place, because they cause havoc in prisons.
I’m guessing this guy is paranoid schizophrenic. His mother reports he went off the rails around eighteen or nineteen. That’s when boys go that way. And of course, schizophrenics don’t take their meds because, of course, the people who give them the drugs are trying to kill them with the “drugs,” which they know are actually poison. That’s the paranoid part of the condition.
6. Yes. Obviously.