Larry Wilmore Takes Fox News To Task Over Charleston Church

The New York Post’s editorial board joined the chorus opposing South Carolina continuing to fly the Confederate flag at the State Capitol after the shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, writing, “Time to take it down, folks.”

The Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the current chief executive of 21st Century Fox and its property, the conservative Fox News.

More from the Post:

Yes, some white Southerners point to it as a symbol of regional pride. But it represented a bloody rebellion against the United States in defense of slavery.

…

The Confederate flag isn’t quite as clear-cut; many no doubt honestly display it to honor ancestors or just the “rebel spirit.” But at core it remains the emblem of those who fought to defend secession and slavery.

That flag has no place on any government institution.

During a Friday night vigil for the victims in the shooting at a Charleston church, Rev. Nelson Rivers III of Charity Missionary Baptist Church offered support to the families of those killed, and made an impassioned call for the Confederate flag to be removed from the South Carolina State Capitol.

(h/t BuzzFeed News)

On Friday night, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) tweeted, “We will have many conversations over the coming days and weeks, and the placement of the Confederate flag will certainly be one of those topics.”

Also, South Carolina State Rep. Norman Brannon (R) told MSNBC that he would sponsor a bill that would “take down” the Confederate flag from state government buildings.

NBA Star Dwight Howard in attendance.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley didn’t mince words in the wake of the massacre of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston.

“I’m pissed,” the former Maryland governor said in a Friday email to supporters, in which he derided Congress for its inability to pass tighter gun control measures.

“I’m pissed that after an unthinkable tragedy like the one in South Carolina yesterday, instead of jumping to act, we sit back and wait for the appropriate moment to say what we’re all thinking: that this is not the America we want to be living in,” O’Malley wrote.

Read more here. — Kim Bellware

HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson reports from Summerville, South Carolina, just outside Charleston: Annie Caddell proudly flies the Confederate flag in her front yard here in the Charleston suburbs. She maintains a cache of spare flags on her front porch, replacing the one on her white flagpole every few months, after it gets tattered. A visitor to her home — if the “no trespassing” sign doesn’t turn him back — is greeted near the door by a green, imitation street sign that reads “Confederate Circle.”

Caddell said she’ll die before her stars and bars stop blowing in the wind.

“Would you let your family history die like that? I don’t think so,” Caddell, who’s “pushing 56,” said. “That’s tantamount to treason in my family. You just don’t do that.”

Her neighbors know to take her at her word. Read more here.

In a statement, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, “Out of respect for those murdered in Charleston, I issued an Executive Order to fly flags over state buildings at half-staff.”

The family of suspected Charlotte church shooter Dylann Roof issued a statement on Friday night, expressing shock over the killings, and offering sympathies and condolences to families of victims.

The full statement:

Words cannot express our shock, grief and disbelief as to what happened that night,” the statement continues.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those killed this week. We have all been touched by the moving words from the victim’s families offering God’s forgiveness and love in the face of such horrible suffering.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) didn’t equivocate Friday when asked about the nature of an attack by a white gunman on a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“It was clearly racially motivated. Clearly,” Santorum told The Huffington Post at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C.

The presidential candidate took issue with news reports that said he blamed the attack on a broader assault against religious liberty. He explained that he didn’t know all the facts when he was first asked about the shooting on Thursday morning.

Read the full story here.

— Igor Bobic

The Department of Justice will expedite a million formula victim assistant grant funding to South Carolina, according to DOJ spokesman Kevin Lewis. Some of the grant funding can be used to help victims of the recent tragedy at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

–Ryan Reilly

Department of Justice spokeswoman Emily Pierce released the following statement:

“The department’s investigation of the shooting incident in Charleston, South Carolina, is ongoing. This heartbreaking episode was undoubtedly designed to strike fear and terror into this community, and the department is looking at this crime from all angles, including as a hate crime and as an act of domestic terrorism.”

–Ryan J. Reilly

WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) – NAACP President Cornell Brooks said on Friday the Confederate flag must come down following the slayings of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina, by a white man who reportedly told police he wanted to incite a race war.

“We cannot have the confederate flag waving in the state capital,” Brooks, head of the oldest civil rights organization in the United States, said at an appearance in Charleston.

The Confederate battle flag, a vestige of the Civil War, continues to fly over state grounds. (Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Gun activists have said allowing guns in church could have stopped Wednesday’s killings at a Charleston, South Carolina, church, and they wasted no time blaming murdered pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D).

In a post on gun activist website TexasCHLForum.com, National Rifle Association board member Charles L. Cotton argued that Pinckney was responsible for the deaths of the eight church members who died alongside him because he did not support legislative proposals that would have allowed concealed carry in churches. Cotton wrote that the victims “might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns.”

As a state senator, Pinckney had opposed a 2011 bill that would have legalized concealed carry in churches. The bill ultimately failed in the legislature.

Read more here.

— Daniel Marans

The New York Times reports that a friend of Dylan Roof’s was so worried about his increasingly racist and unhinged behavior that he took his gun away.

“He was saying all this stuff about how the races should be segregated, that whites should be with whites,” Mr. Meek said. “I could tell there was something inside him, there was something he wouldn’t let go. I was trying to tell him, ‘What’s wrong?’ All he would say was that he was planning to do something crazy.”

At first Mr. Meek said he did not take Mr. Roof seriously. But he became worried enough that several weeks ago he took away and hid Mr. Roof’s .45-caliber handgun, which Mr. Roof had bought with money given to him by his parents for his 21st birthday. But at the urging of his girlfriend, Mr. Meek returned the weapon because he was on probation and did not want to get into trouble.

Read more here.

Joe Riley, the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, said the case of the shooter who killed nine people during a prayer service at a historically black church “would merit” the death penalty.

During a press conference Friday, Riley said he’s generally not in favor of the death penalty, but “that’s the law in South Carolina.”

Read more here.

The New York Times has more details on how the massacre in Charleston took place. Among the most chilling details: two potential victims who survived by pretending they had been shot. From the Times:

NYT: The gunman took aim at the oldest person present, Susie Jackson, 87, Mr. Sanders’s aunt, Ms. Washington said. Mr. Sanders told the man to point the gun at him instead, she said, but the man said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to shoot all of you.”

Mr. Sanders dived in front of his aunt and the first shot struck him, Ms. Washington said, and then the gunman began shooting others. She said Mr. Sanders’s mother, Felicia, and his niece, lay motionless on the floor, playing dead, and were not shot.

Read more here.

Roof had 88 Facebook friends, according to the New York Times. That could be meaningful, according to Todd Blodgett, the former co-head of a white-power record label. Blodgett, who was reportedly a paid FBI informant, notes in an email that “’88’ (out of ALL the infinite amount of numbers, and numerical combos) just happens to be racist code-speak for “Heil Hitler.” WHY? Because ‘H’ is the EIGHTH letter of the alphabet; doubling it up stands for Heil Hitler.” Blodgett, who also served in Ronald Reagan’s White House, added in a phone interview, “I have no doubt in my mind that’s what that kid was trying to do. That’s how they work.”

–Nick Baumann

NBC News reports that Dylann Roof, who has allegedly confessed to shooting nine people at a Charleston, almost didn’t follow through with the murders. Sources told NBC News that Roof said he “almost didn’t go through with it because everyone was so nice to him.”

–Benjamin Hart

A man visits a memorial with flowers outside the Emanuel AME Church June 19, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Dylan Roof, a resident of West Columbia, South Carolina, wants everyone to know he is not the man who confessed to shooting people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Roof, who spells his first name with only one “n,” took to Facebook Thursday and tried to clear up the confusion, saying he has been confused for Dylann Roof for years.

— Amanda Terkel

The man accused of killing nine people at a Charleston, South Carolina, church confessed to the crime, unnamed law enforcement officials told CNN Friday.

MSNBC also reported that 21-year-old Dylann Roof, accused of the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, had confessed, citing unnamed law enforcement officers as their source.

When reached by The Huffington Post Friday morning, Charleston Police spokesman Charles Francis declined to confirm a confession.

Read more here.

–Simon McCormack

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said she thinks the shooting of nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, could reignite the conversation over the Confederate flag that flies outside of her state’s Capitol.

“What we hope is that we do the things South Carolinians do, which is have the conversation, allow some thoughtful words to be exchanged, be kind about it, come together on what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re trying to do it,” Haley told CBS on Friday. “I think the state will start talking about that again, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Read more here.

–Paige Lavender

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) called for Dylann Roof, the suspect in the shooting of nine people in a historic black church, to receive the death penalty.

“We will absolutely want him to have the death penalty,” Haley said during a Friday interview on NBC’s “Today,” calling Roof “a person filled with hate.”

Read more here.

–Paige Lavender

HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson and Sebastian Murdock report from Charleston: Andre McPherson has been coming to the Emanuel AME Church here off and on since 2003. His visit on Thursday night was his first in a couple of years, he said with a hint of guilt, but he felt he owed it to the church leaders and congregation to stop by.

In his more trying days when he was homeless, McPherson said, he often found himself at the doorstep of what’s known as “Mother Emanuel.” The Charleston resident credits the historic African-American church with helping him get off of drugs.

“This church helped me get me life together,” McPherson, 44, said through tears. “It helped me go back to my kids. It helped me get away from a certain street mentality. It helped me have pride.”

McPherson was one of hundreds from Charleston and nearby towns who filed by the church doors on Thursday, paying respects to the nine who died after being shot inside the previous night. The suspected gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, had apparently been welcomed as a stranger to the church’s regular Wednesday evening Bible study session, spending an hour with the group before opening fire. One woman reportedly said he told her he was letting her go so she could tell the story of what happened.

Read more here.

In an interview with The Washington Post, the shooting suspect’s uncle, Carson Cowles, tried to grasp the aftermath of what happened when his nephew allegedly shot to death nine people at a Bible study session at Emanuel AME Church on Wednesday.

“The whole world is going to be looking at his family who raised this monster,” Cowles said.

Contrary to Roof’s social media profile that show him sporting a Rhodesia apartheid flag, Cowles said the shy 21-year-old had no problems with black people.

Even as he described Roof as a quiet young man who kept out of trouble, Cowles shook with anger at the thought that his nephew could have carried out the crime with which he is accused.

“I’d be the executioner myself if they would allow it,” he said.

Read more from The Washington Post here.

HuffPost’s Kim Bellware reports: A North Carolina florist running late for work on Thursday trailed a suspected murderer for 35 miles and was credited by police with helping catch Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old wanted in Wednesday night’s shooting deaths of nine people in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Debbie Dills, a florist and minister who works in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, was driving to work along U.S. 74 when she spotted Roof in his black Hyundai Elantra heading west. Something about his car seemed familiar to her, she told ABC News.

“I saw the pictures of him with the bowl cut. I said, ‘I’ve seen that car for some reason.’ I look over, and it’s got a South Carolina tag on it,” Dills told the Shelby Star on Thursday afternoon. “I thought, ‘Nah, that’s not his car.’ Then, I got closer and saw that haircut. I was nervous. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?”

Read more here.

Shooting Suspect Dylann Storm Roof is in custody at the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office. His bond hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday. Earlier, Roof waived extradition in North Carolina, where he was captured, and was sent back to South Carolina. He also waived his right to counsel, reports the Associated Press.

— Kelly Chen

HuffPost’s Nick Wing reports: A barbaric act like Wednesday’s massacre of nine strangers by a white gunman at the historic black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shocks the conscience and makes it uncomfortable to face the painful truth about what happened.

This may help explain why some Republicans steered clear of the issue of race on Thursday in remarks about the killings. The politicians, including some 2016 presidential candidates, offered condolences to the victims, but resisted ascribing racial motivations to the gunman, even as information about suspected killer Dylann Roof mounts.

Read more here.