Former White House Press Secretary-turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki attacked President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and others on Wednesday’s The Briefing for offering “little more to offer than thoughts and prayers” after the Minneapolis shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church that left two children dead during a school Mass that also saw 17 individuals wounded. According to Psaki, the problem isn’t that the shooter was transgender, or anti-Trump, or anti-Semitic, but guns, which also led her to paint a false picture of Minnesota’s gun laws and gun violence in the U.S. as a whole.
An emotionally distraught Psaki declared, “And I felt a mixture of anger and—a lot of anger— and emotional exhaustion about this today, as I’m sure many of you have, because we have been here so many times, so many times, and yet again, like clockwork, half the politicians in our country have little more to offer than thoughts and prayers. That is all they are offering. ‘Join us all—’ ‘Join all of us in praying for the victims,’ was Vice President JD Vance's response today. That's what he said. That's it. “Please join me in praying for everyone involved,’ Trump wrote.”
Psaki continued:
We have seen this play out over and over again. There is a shooting. Then come the thoughts and prayers, and then comes the attempt to shift the focus. This is what always happens. You're going to start seeing narratives. You're already seeing them. They're already out there about how the shooter was trans. You're going to see how narratives about how the shooter appeared to be anti-Trump and anti-Semitic and clearly was in the midst of a mental health crisis. There's no question about that. But here's the thing. There are trans people all over the world. There are anti-Semitic people, unfortunately, all over the world, and people filled with plenty of political hate all over the world. And mental health issues are not unique to the United States. And yes, we should do more to address them. But it's also an issue all over the world.
Psaki isn’t wrong that there are transgender people all over the world, but American liberals are increasingly outliers in how they approach the issue of giving hormones to minors. Likewise, anti-Semitism is a cancer seen elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean we should just put it to the side in order to only talk about guns.
But that is what Psaki wanted to do, “But this is the only country where shootings like this, this one happen this often. The United States not only has the highest rate of gun violence of any country in the world, it's become a leading cause of death for young people and teenagers in this country. That should make everybody angry.”
The U.S. does not have the highest rate of gun violence in the world. In 2023, the U.S. was sixth, but that could be due to insufficient data from other countries. In 2022 it was 19th.
Psaki also claimed:
Weaponizing the shooter's identity is meant to distract from what matters. That is what they are doing: trying to distract from what matters. Here's what matters. Today's shooter bought the rifle, handgun, and shotgun they used to do what they did today legally. We live in a country with more guns than people where there are not universal background checks. There are not bans on assault weapons. And it is far too easy to buy a gun. It's the guns, everyone. It's not really a secret.
In 2023, Minnesota officials celebrated their new gun control law that, in their own words, enacted a “red flag law and universal background checks.
Here is a transcript for the August 27 show:
MSNBC The Briefing with Jen Psaki
8/27/2025
9:08 PM ET
JEN PSAKI: And I felt a mixture of anger and—a lot of anger— and emotional exhaustion about this today, as I’m sure many of you have, because we have been here so many times, so many times, and yet again, like clockwork, half the politicians in our country have little more to offer than thoughts and prayers. That is all they are offering. “Join us all—”
“Join all of us in praying for the victims” was Vice President JD Vance's response today. That's what he said. That's it. “Please join me in praying for everyone involved,” Trump wrote.
We have seen this play out over and over again. There is a shooting. Then come the thoughts and prayers, and then comes the attempt to shift the focus. This is what always happens. You're going to start seeing narratives. You're already seeing them. They're already out there about how the shooter was trans. You're going to see how narratives about how the shooter appeared to be anti-Trump and anti-Semitic and clearly was in the midst of a mental health crisis. There's no question about that. But here's the thing. There are trans people all over the world. There are anti-Semitic people, unfortunately, all over the world, and people filled with plenty of political hate all over the world. And mental health issues are not unique to the United States. And yes, we should do more to address them. But it's also an issue all over the world.
But this is the only country where shootings like this, this one happen this often. The United States not only has the highest rate of gun violence of any country in the world, it's become a leading cause of death for young people and teenagers in this country. That should make everybody angry.
Weaponizing the shooter's identity is meant to distract from what matters. That is what they are doing: trying to distract from what matters. Here's what matters. Today's shooter bought the rifle, handgun, and shotgun they used to do what they did today, legally. We live in a country with more guns than people where there are not universal background checks. There are not bans on assault weapons. And it is far too easy to buy a gun. It's the guns, everyone. It's not really a secret.
There are a lot of things to feel outraged about right now, and I try, I really try hard not to be a constant driver of rip-your-hair-out outrage here, but I hope this is something that you feel moved to do something about. It's not just about today. And today was an absolute tragedy. It's this is a never ending cycle that doesn’t seem to stop.