MRC Inaccurately Brands Church Shooter As ‘Pro-Hamas Terrorist,’ ‘Transgender’

The Media Research Center seized on a shooting at Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston to push its right-wing narratives about the purported identity of the alleged shooter. First up was Nicholas Fondacaro, who screeched in a Feb. 12 post the the shooter was a ‘Pro-Hamas Terrorist’:

On Monday, word spread like wildfire that the alleged shooter of the Houston megachurch belonging to Joel Olsteen [sic] was a pro-Palestinian terrorist who had the message “Free Palestine” written on the rifle. It was also discovered that the shooter was transgendered. For hours, far-left MSNBC refused to update their on-air reporting to inform viewers of the likely motive behind the attack. But while CNN News Central had reported the “Free Palestine” message, they danced about the shooter’s transgenderism.

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As he was wrapping up the segment, Miller commented that “there’s a lot going on in the background here trying to figure out who she was, what her story is, and what exactly she was trying to do,” but the message on the rifle was an “interesting indicator.”

As of the publication of this piece, it has been over four hours since CNN first reported on-air that the rifle had “Free Palestine” written on it, and MSNBC still had not mentioned it.

Later that day, chief transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg went on a tirade of more familiar talking points under the headline “Church Shooter Was Transgender, Need We Say More?”

This story is going to vanish from the news faster than the speed of light.

To nobody’s surprise, word just broke that the villain who shot up Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas is a transgender man. And the leftist media, who seems to believe that transgender individuals aren’t suffering from a mental illness, are going to try their hardest to hide that fact, insist that the shooter shot the church because Christians are “bigots,” and/or just not talk about the story at all.

And there are still people who think the media isn’t biased?

Late Sunday afternoon, just before the Spanish-language service at Joe Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas, a transgender man – also know as a woman – waltzed into the church with a gun and a child and fired off as many as 12 shots before a Houston police officer and another armed agent who were working off-duty in the church, shot and killed the aggressor. The child was injured and rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition.

A 57-year-old man was also shot in the leg, and as of Monday both he and the child are in the hospital recovering.

Now it’s become clear that the shooter, born a female named Genesse Ivonne Moreno, was transgender and went by the name Jeffery. Jeffery has a long criminal history stretching for years, including convictions for possession of marijuana, theft, forgery and assault. 

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It’s become obvious that those suffering from mental illnesses have a proclivity to act out in irrational ways, and have started making the list of mass shooters in greater numbers. Look at the record as of late: the Colorado Springs shooter was nonbinary, the Nashville school shooter was transgender as was the shooter in Aberdeen, as well as the gunmen in both the Denver and Iowa school shootings. And now, this.

So when the left tells you that this whole gender ideology nonsense is normal or not affiliated with a mental illness, tell them they’re wrong. We have the receipts.

It turns out that neither epithet the MRC used for the church shooter was entirely accurate. As Media Matters summarized:

However, initial police reports about the shooter’s identity appear to be inaccurate. Police now say while the suspect has used “both male and female names” as part of her criminal history of forgery, she “has been identified this entire time as female.” Local reporting indicates her “antisemitic writings and conflicts with her ex-husband are being investigated as possible motives for the shooting,” and the suspect was able to legally acquire an AR-15 despite previously being placed under an emergency detention order by Houston police. 

Neither Fondacaro nor Mandelburg mention the fact that the suspect was allowed to legally acquire an AR-15 despite the fact that she shouldn’t have been. Meanwhile, Tim Graham’s Feb. 12 podcast referenced the shooting by claiming that the media was “avoiding inconvenient truths about the attempted shooter at Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston”; we can presume he wasn’t talking about the gun.

Meanwhile, Jorge Bonilla was designated to obsess over ther shooter’s purported identity in a Feb. 13 post:

The networks each sang from the same hymnal as they covered the awful shooting at Houston’s Lakewood Church: actively excluding the trans identity of the shooter, which caused a great deal of confusion as details of the story were trickling in.

Most emblematic of the news coverage is NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt’s introduction to Morgan Chasky’s report from Houston which, across the dial, was the top story: 

All three networks ran a variant of this common theme with these same basic points: ‘Joel Osteen’s megachurch’, a recount of events, the intervention of off-duty law enforcement, the ‘Palestine’ sticker on the shooter’s rifle and the antisemitic writings found in her vehicle. 

Also echoing across all three networks- the shooter’s mental health state. NBC went above and beyond by noting that the shooter was at one time subject to an emergency detention order.

But missing from all three reports- the shooter’s trans identity. As our friend Chaya Raichik reported: the shooter, who was born female, was detained multiple times under a male identity. There is no explanation of this whatsoever. The public is simply to accept the narrative of the troubled woman at face value. In fact, many were confused as to what the shooter was– male or female- until the medical examiner weighed in.

The “Palestine” sticker and antisemitic writings are explained away as a beef with her ex husband’s family. But even law enforcement stated that it is too early to establish a motive for this shooting. 

Fondacaro returned again in a Feb. 13 post to similarly ratchet up the transphobia:

The second verse, same as the first. In a continuation of their blackout from the previous evening, the Tuesday morning newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC absolutely refused to acknowledge the fact that the attempted mass shooter at the Lakewood megachurch in Houston, Texas was transgender, who would go by male and female names; a fact disclosed by authorities during a press conference.

What they did make sure to note, rightly, was that the shooter was anti-Semitic and a supporter of Palestine. “And it’s that anti-Semitic material combined with the fact authorities saw the word ‘Palestine’ written on the shooter’s rifle, which has them saying that they are not ruling out terrorism or a hate crime as a potential motivating cause here,” NBC correspondent Morgan Chesky announced on the Today show.

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But what neither Chesky nor the rest of the correspondents to be covered here shared was Hassig’s note that the shooter went by different gender identities.

To answer Mandelburg’s headline question: Yes, you and your co-workers needed to say a lot more — specifically, correcting your posts to reflect the actual facts. Then again, we know that narrative trumps truth at the MRC, so we’re not terribly surprised that they won’t correct the record.