The Trump administration uses Quebec shooting to justify Muslim ban, only to find the gunman was actually a white Trump supporter

Last night, a gunman opened fire on people praying at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center, leaving six dead and five critically injured. Somehow, I didn’t hear about it until this afternoon, when I was listening to audio of Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s surreal and rambling press conference. Spicer, for those of you who may have missed it, referred to the shooting as “a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the President is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation’s safety and security.” Yes, what happened in Quebec, according to Spicer, was justification for Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries… a terrifying illustration of what might happen of only we were to let the wrong Muslim into the United States. The only problem is, the shootings appear to have been the work of a white nationalist Trump supporter [seen above], and not a Muslim, as had been reported by Fox News and others. [A Muslim man, who had been praying at the Mosque, had apparently been questioned by authorities, but he was later released.]

[Fox News got it wrong, as did several others on the right wing, including anti-Muslim activist Pamela Gellar, who said earlier today, “As I predicted last night, the shooters in the Quebec mosque attack are Muslim, as is generally the case in these circumstances.”]

The following comes from Glenn Greenwald

…The actual shooting suspect is 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a white French Canadian who is, by all appearances, a rabid anti-immigrant nationalist. A leader of a local immigration rights groups, François Deschamps, told a local paper he recognized his photo as an anti-immigrant far-right “troll” who has been hostile to the group online.

The Globe and Mail added that he “was known in the city’s activist circles as a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump.” And Bisonnette’s Facebook page – now taken down but still archived – lists among its “likes” the far right French nationalist Marine Le Pen, Islam critics Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Donald J. Trump…

So, where does that leave us now? If, as Sean Spicer noted, what happened in Quebec proved the need for executive action, will President Trump, now that we know what really happened, take swift action to block his white supporters, who, like Alexandre Bissonnette, have engaged in online trolling against Muslims and women, from entering the United States? After all, as journalist Shaun King just pointed out, “This white man murdered 6 more people than EVERY refugee from Donald Trump’s banned nation list combined.”