Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk immediately exploited Tuesday’s tragic attack at the Istanbul airport to tweet a tirade against Syrian refugees and his Democratic opponent, well before the facts emerged about who was responsible or even for the bodies of the slain to be counted.
In a series of tweets each one minute apart, Kirk offered condolences to Turks but quickly pivoted to attacking his opponent — Democratic congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who supports Syrian resettlement — and calling for freezing the refugee program.
Kirk’s rush to politicize the event was matched by his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who proclaimed that we “must do everything possible to keep this horrible terrorism outside the United States.” But even Trump didn’t immediately launch into a political attack.
Back in 2005, Kirk said he was “OK with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states.”
Top photo: Kirk during an event in the nation’s capital on Feb. 9, 2016.
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