In this photo from social media video, passengers run from a subway car in a station in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, April 12, 2022. A gunman filled a rush-hour subway train with smoke and shot multiple people Tuesday, leaving wounded commuters bleeding on a Brooklyn platform as others ran screaming, authorities said. Police were still searching for the suspect. (Will B Wylde via AP)
Former MSNBC pundit and host of the "Touré Show" podcast, Touré Neblett had an interesting reaction to the aftermath of the recent Brooklyn subway attack that left five people critically wounded and many more injured on Tuesday.
Though police have yet to bring him into custody, they've identified 62-year-old Frank James as the suspect. But the detail of the alleged shooter that most interested the former MSNBC host was the person’s skin color.
Touré took to Twitter following the release of the details of the suspect and lamented the revelation about his race. He wrote, "Police say the suspect is a male Black.’ Damn. Damn. Damn."
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Some users were quick to slam Touré for expressing outrage on the racial aspect of the shooter rather than the shooting itself.
Conservative Twitter personality Noam Blum responded to the tweet mocking the host for his "race war fetishism."
"I, too, am upset when a mass shooting isn’t useful to my race war fetishism," he wrote.
British author and political commentator Andrew Sullivan made a comment on Touré’s tweet that actually prompted the former MSNBC host to respond. Sullivan replied, "Feel the racism," and Touré retweeted the statement, quipping, "He used to be a fighter for justice."
Police officers patrol a subway station in New York, Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Multiple people were shot and injured Tuesday at a subway station in New York City during a morning rush hour attack that left wounded commuters bleeding on a train platform. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Touré is also a supporter of the left-wing #DefundThePolice and Black Lives Matter movement.
The media personality snapped back at someone in a thread of responses to his original tweet who said, "Crime data shows that Defunding the Police only fills the morgue with people of color."
Touré tweeted, "How would ‘crime data’ show that defunding the police proves anything when defunding the police has never happened? What does time travel prove? We have no idea. No one has ever done it."
Demonstrators hold a sign reading "Defund the police" during a protest over the death of a Black man, Daniel Prude, after police put a spit hood over his head during an arrest on March 23, in Rochester, New York, U.S. September 6, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Touré has a history of fixating on race when it comes to politics and the criminal justice system. During a 2018 appearance on MSNBC's AM Joy, he slammed then-Virginia GOP Senate candidate Corey Stewart for saying that "people are sick and tired of talking about race all the time."
Touré laid into the Republican guest, asserting, "This is a white supremacist country and we have to deal with that in every way — in how we relate to the police, in how we relate to jobs, how we relate to the criminal justice everything — everything."
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