Rosie O'Donnell has been forced to apologize for calling the Minneapolis Catholic school shooter a "Republican, MAGA person, white supremacist," admitting she "did not do due diligence."
"I know a lot of you were very upset about the video I made before I went away for a few days," she said in a TikTok video shared Sunday. "You are right, and I did not do my due diligence before I made that emotional statement.
"I said things about the shooter that were incorrect. I assumed, like most shooters, they followed a standard MO and had standard feelings of you know, NRA-loving kind of gun people.
"The truth is, I messed up and when you mess up, you fess up. I'm sorry, this is my apology video, and I hope it's enough."
In videos and journals left behind by the shooter, there were threats against those supportive of Israel, President Donald Trump, and anti-God – none of those crusades are right-wing.
Here is the false statement that O'Donnell was forced to backtrack on, as the New York Post reported:
Saw about the Minnesota shooting, and it brought me right back to Columbine in 1999 when I just could not get it through my head that students in [America] were shooting each other in schools.
This was a church inside a Catholic school. And what do you know? This was a white guy, Republican, MAGA person, what do you know? White supremacist.
The NRA is a terrorist organization. And they have been for many years.
When is enough, enough America? Haven't you had enough of Donald Trump? The Heritage Foundation? All their bullsh*t? He's their puppet … but guess what? It's coming to an end.
Investigators have identified the attacker as a 23-year-old who changed their birth name from Robert Westman to Robin Westman.
Westman died by suicide after killing two children, ages 8 and 10, and wounding 18 others during Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church and School last week. Videos and writings linked to Westman showed a fixation on prior mass shooters and included phrases such as "Kill Donald Trump" on ammunition magazines.
O'Donnell, a longtime President Donald Trump antagonist, has feuded with him for more than a decade; the clash reignited this summer when Trump publicly threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship.
Here are recent mass shooters with ties to transgender ideology or suffering from mental illness potentially related to gender dysphoria:
- 2023 – Nashville (The Covenant School): Shooter identified by police as transgender.
- 2022 – Colorado Springs (Club Q): Shooter later described themselves as nonbinary in court filings.
"We have to put this incident into the broader context of what we have witnessed in just the last few years, more than half-a-dozen attacks of a similar variety involving individuals who are confused about their gender, to put it mildly," Sebastian Gorka told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
"And then, as you mentioned at the top of your monologue, we have the videos, we have the statements from the dead shooter that were clearly anti-Christian. Just as with the transgender attack on the Nashville Christian school in which more children were killed, there is an ideological connection to multiple of these attacks, where innocent children, especially Christians and Catholics, are targeted.
"And that is very, very disturbing."
When CNN attempted to refute the data on transgender-linked mass shooters, Gorka shot back: "Let me be clear: In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who are confused in their gender, seven in just the last couple of years," he said. "That's inordinately high."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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