Donald Trump Jr. Says Democrats’ Reaction to Mollie Tibbetts’ Death Is ‘Despicable’

Jack Phillips
Updated:

Donald Trump Jr., the son of President Donald Trump, said that the Democrats’ reaction to the death of Iowa woman Mollie Tibbetts, who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant working in the area, is “heartless” and “despicable.”

“The mask is off and the true radical face of the Democrats has been exposed. They are seemingly more concerned with protecting their radical open-borders agenda than the lives of innocent Americans,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the Des Moines Register.

“When asked about Mollie’s murder, Sen. Elizabeth Warren—who is for some reason considered a leading contender for the Democrats’ 2020 ticket—played down the killing and said the focus should be on the ‘real problems’ of our immigration system, such as the separation of families at our border,” he wrote.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, is accused of killing Tibbetts, whose case became the subject of a statewide search and national headlines.

Trump Jr. then slammed the media for its coverage.

“Worse still, a number of media outlets and pundits insisted that conservatives and Republicans were ‘politicizing’ Mollie’s murder—an absurd claim coming from the same people who used family separation at the border to call for the abolishment of ICE and jump at the opportunity to exploit any tragedy involving guns to call for the end of the Second Amendment as we know it,” the president’s son wrote.

The paper’s opinion editor, Kathie Obradovich, issued a statement about publishing Trump Jr.’s column.

“We deeply respect the Tibbetts family and we used our own editorial voice to support the position that undocumented immigrants in general are not responsible for this tragedy. But we continue to do our job and our pages reflect the conversations in our community, even when it means publishing opinions with which we strongly disagree,” Obradovich told the New York Post.

Details of the Case

The Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner said on Aug. 23, that the body found in a cornfield earlier this week is the missing 20-year-old student. A preliminary autopsy was carried out on Aug. 22, and the medical examiner’s office stated that “additional findings” might be revealed after another examination, Fox News reported.

She died from “sharp force injuries,” Fox News reported.

Officials, meanwhile,  said there doesn’t appear to have been prior contact between Rivera and Tibbetts.

“There is nothing that we have come across as of yet that shows they had any type of relationship. And I don’t mean intimate dating—I mean friendship, acquaintance, what have you,” Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, told the Des Moines Register.

He said, “He had mentioned, I believe, that he had seen her before. In what context—I don’t know if it was just in passing or had seen her in town somewhere, but it sounded like he at least had recognized her.”

Tibbetts went missing in mid-July after going for a jog.

Jack Phillips
Jack Phillips
Breaking News Reporter
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter who covers a range of topics, including politics, U.S., and health news. A father of two, Jack grew up in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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