Kellyanne Conway is pointing a finger at the media after shooting

Kellyanne Conway on June 16 seemed to accuse the media of fomenting the kind of anger that led James T. Hodgkinson to embark on a shooting rampage at a baseball practice for congressional Republicans two days earlier. Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” the counselor to the president stopped short of directly blaming the press for the attack. But Conway came close, as she identified various factors that she said could have contributed to the violence.

“Look, this is also the natural byproduct if you have images of the president being shot in rapper's videos, being assassinated in a production there in New York City, the picture of a severed head,” Conway said. This was her commentary on the media: "I did a really clever thing: I went back and looked at exactly what was being discussed on all the TV shows, except yours, at 7:09 a.m. on Wednesday, when this happened, and it's a really curious exercise. Because as Steve Scalise was fighting for his life and crawling into right field in a trail of blood, you should go back and see what people were saying about the president and Republicans at that very moment." Others, like former Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, have pointed fingers at the media, but Conway's remarks represent a first from a White House official.