The Wire creator David Simon blamed Donald Trump for a shooting at The Capital Gazette that left two of his friends and three others dead – while a Reuters editor has apologized for saying the president has blood on his hands.
‘Blood today in an American newsroom. Aren’t you proud you vile, fascist son of a b****,’ Simon said in a tweet directed at Trump in the wake of Thursday’s attack in Annapolis.
He was responding to a tweet from the president in April last year where he referred to the ‘fake news media’ as the ‘enemy of the American people!’
Meanwhile, Reuters Breakingviews editor Rob Cox tweeted: ‘This is what happens when @realDonaldTrump calls journalists the enemy of the people.
‘Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul.’
Cox later apologized, saying he had ‘responded emotionally and inappropriately’ to news of the shooting.
The Gazette’s assistant editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, 59, reporter and editor John McNamara, 56, features reporter Wendi Winters, 65, editorial writer Gerald Fischman, 61, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith, 34, all died in the office shooting.
Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, was charged on Friday with five counts of first-degree murder after allegedly opening fire in the Gazette’s office in a ‘targeted attack’ after the newspaper exposed him for stalking a woman in 2011.
The Wire creator David Simon has blamed Donald Trump for a shooting at The Capital Gazette
‘Blood today in an American newsroom. Aren’t you proud you vile, fascist son of a b****,’ Simon said in a tweet directed at Trump after the shooting
But Simon, who created the hit crime drama after working as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 until 1995, said the shooter’s actions were influenced by ‘Trump’s direct language.’
‘F*** you. A friend has not yet reported in safe. It is Trump’s direct language. ‘Enemy of the people.’ Fuck you and him both,’ he replied to a Twitter user.
Simon, a Democrat who is vocally anti-Trump, revealed Hiassen was a friend and colleague of both he and his wife’s while his friendship with McNamara dated back to college.
‘Both are dead. And I’m thinking about them tonight, but also about the next shooter walking into the next newsroom to deploy against ‘enemies of the people,’ he said.
He continued to blame Trump’s rhetoric for the shooting in a series of profanity-laden tweets, noted the shooter had harbored a grudge against the newspaper for seven years before the attacking anyone.
‘His grievance went for seven years without gunfire,’ he said,
‘But in the wake of a US president declaring that journalists are ‘enemies of the people’ the escalation to violence occurs. Context is king. Climate matters.’
He added: ‘The reality is that the shooter’s beef with the paper dated back to 2011, but only in the last months have journalists been declared ‘enemies of the people’ or agitators called for their assassination.’
Simon blamed Donald Trump’s rhetoric for the shooting in a series of profanity-laden tweets
Simon said the shooter had harbored a grudge against the newspaper for seven years before the attacking anyone and that the escalation to violence came after Trump declared journalists the ‘enemies of the people’
In another tweet, he said: ‘FACTS: Whatever was in the shooter’s head, the US President stood ready to bolster and validate it. We know this. It is on the record.
‘The US President chose to declare to citizens of the republic that journalists of a free press were ‘enemies of the people.’
Simon also responded to White House press secretary’s tweet condemning the attack on ‘innocent journalists doing their job,’ once again referring to Trump’s labelling of the media as ‘enemies of the people.’
Cox, however, deleted his tweet about Trump and apologized for the comments.
‘When I saw the news today that a mass shooter had targeted the employees of a newspaper in Maryland I responded emotionally and inappropriately,’ he said.
He added that although his comments were ‘entirely personal’, they were not in keeping with the Reuters Trust Principles and his ‘own standards for letting facts, not snap judgments, guide my understanding.’
Cox added: My experience as a member of the community of Newtown, Connecticut in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, combined with the possibility that my colleagues in the press were being targeted, pushed me into a state of emotional distress.
‘I am sorry for my comments, which I quickly deleted and have disavowed, and especially remorseful if they did anything to distract from the thoughts and love we must send to the community of Annapolis.’
Reuters Breakingviews editor Rob Cox (pictured) apologized after tweeting that Donald Trump had ‘blood on his hands’
Cox later apologized, saying that he had ‘responded emotionally and inappropriately,’ to news of the shooting
Reuters editor-in-chief Steve Adler also issued a statement on Thursday night.
‘Earlier this evening, Reuters Breakingviews Editor Rob Cox tweeted about the shooting in Annapolis, Maryland. He has since deleted the tweet and apologized,’ Adler said.
‘Mr. Cox’s actions were inconsistent with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles requiring journalists to maintain freedom from bias.
‘We do not condone his behavior and will take appropriate action.’
Thursday’s attack came amid months of verbal and online attacks on the ‘fake news media’ from politicians and others from President Trump on down.
It prompted New York City police to immediately tighten security at news organizations in the nation’s media capital.
Acting Police Chief William Krampf, of Anne Arundel County, called it a targeted attack in which the gunman ‘looked for his victims.’
‘This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people,’ Krampf said.
Simon (pictured), who created the hit crime drama after working as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun, said the shooter’s actions were influenced by ‘Trump’s direct language’
Simon was friends with Rob Hiaasen (right) and John McNamara (left) who both died in the shooting
Journalists crawled under desks and sought other hiding places in what they described as minutes of terror as they heard the gunman’s footsteps and the repeated blasts of the shotgun as he moved about the newsroom.
As well as the five people who were slain, the newspaper said two other employees had non-life threatening injuries and were later released from a hospital.
Hiassen’s brother, novelist Carl Hiaasen, said he was ‘devastated and heartsick’ at losing his brother, who he described as ‘one of the most gentle and funny people I’ve ever known.’
Phil Davis, a courts and crime reporter for the paper, tweeted that the gunman shot out the glass door to the office and fired into the newsroom, sending people scrambling under desks.
‘There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,’ he wrote in a tweet.
Sales assistant Rebecca Smith (pictured), 34, also died in the shooting on Thursday
Editorial writer Gerald Fischman (left) and features reporter Wendi Winters (right) both died
In a later interview appearing on the paper’s online site, Davis likened the newspaper office to a ‘war zone.’
‘I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff – not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death – all the time,’ he said.
‘But as much as I’m going to try to articulate how traumatizing it is to be hiding under your desk, you don’t know until you’re there and you feel helpless.’
Survivors of the shooting worked while awaiting news of the fate of their colleagues to put out a Friday edition with a front page that honored the five victims of shooting.
It came after Chase Cook, a Capital Gazette reporter, tweeted: ‘I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.’
Reporter Selene San Felice told CNN she was at her desk but ran after hearing shots, only to find a back door locked. She then watched as a colleague was shot, adding she didn’t glimpse the gunman.
Police work the scene of a shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper building on Thursday
‘I heard footsteps a couple of times,’ she said. ‘I was breathing really loud and was trying not to, but I couldn’t be quiet.’
Survivors said the shooting – though it seemed agonizingly long – lasted mere minutes. And police said their response was swift.
Police spokesman Lt. Ryan Frashure said officers arrived within about 60 seconds and took the gunman into custody without an exchange of gunfire.
About 170 people were then evacuated from the building, which houses other offices, many leaving with their hands up as police and other emergency vehicles arrived.
At the White House, spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: ‘There is no room for violence, and we stick by that. Violence is never tolerated in any form, no matter whom it is against.’
The Capital Gazette still put out a paper in the wake of the attack, with a front page honoring the five victims
Capital Gazette reporter Chase Cook (right) and photographer Joshua McKerrow (left) work on the next day’s newspaper while awaiting news of whether their colleagues were alive
Hours later, investigators remained on the cordoned-off site early Friday as they sought clues to the gunman’s motives.
‘The shooter has not been very forthcoming, so we don’t have any information yet on motive,’ Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh said.
In 2012, Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, alleging he was harmed by an article about his conviction for stalking a woman in a criminal harassment case a year earlier.
The suit was dismissed by a judge who wrote Ramos hadn’t shown ‘anything that was published about you is, in fact, false.’ An appeals court later upheld the dismissal.
Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said the community was grieving the attack on its paper.
‘These are the guys that come to city council meetings, have to listen to boring politicians and sit there,’ Buckley said.
‘They don’t make a lot of money. It’s just immoral that their lives should be in danger.’