Donald Trump’s response to the Brown University shooting is ‘things can happen’
In the aftermath of the Brown University shooting, Donald Trump offered misinformation online and empty phrases in public. On Sunday, he dropped three words about the tragic incident, so hollow it barely qualified as a response.
After a shooting at Brown University left nine injured and two dead, Trump’s first instinct was not clarity or caution. It was misinformation. He initially posted that “I have been briefed,” and announced that a person of interest was in custody. Only to correct himself 20 minutes later, writing that Brown University had “reversed their previous statement.”
Later, as he exited the White House, Trump briefly addressed reporters in a familiar, apathetic tone:
“I’ve been fully briefed on the Brown University situation. A terrible thing it is. All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt. We’ll inform you later as to what’s happening, but it’s a shame. Just pray.”
The response drew immediate backlash. It was almost like prayer had become the default Republican placeholder for action. People have been demanding gun control measures forever, but Trump always pulls a “just pray” instead of confronting the issue. And the president wasn’t done.
Trump responded to the shooting with “Things can happen.”
On Sunday, during the White House Christmas Reception, he returned to the incident. This time, after praising Brown as “a great school,” he summarized the shooting in three words.
“Things can happen.”
And that was it. He followed the phrase with a generic wish for the injured to “get well fast” and offered “deepest regards” to the families of the deceased. But the damage was already done. Reducing a mass shooting to a vague inevitability wasn’t just careless; it was revealing of his lack of empathy. As one user on X wrote, “He’s so devoid of empathy, he can’t even force it.”
But the backlash wasn’t so impassive. Americans are tired of getting an offhand “things can happen” slapped onto their faces instead of the government taking accountability. One user compared the remark to Trump’s past responses to mass shootings. “I’m surprised he didn’t say ‘we have to move on,’ like he did after the Perry High School shooting,”
Trump probably has no emotions
Trump’s insensitivity has gotten the best of even the kindest people. One bluntly wrote, “They are not ‘things,’ you pathetic monster. They are human beings.” Several other reactions focused on the nihilism embedded in the phrase itself. “This is the equivalent of a shrug,” one wrote. Another joked darkly, “I guess he got tired of saying thoughts and prayers. So now he’s moved on to ‘things can happen.’”
“But Thoughts and prayers” at least gestures toward sympathy, however empty it may be. “Things can happen” does something else entirely. It normalizes the violence and frames mass shootings as random, unavoidable occurrences. When in reality, they are as much a result of policy choices and political paralysis related to gun control as they are of personal moral decay.
While Trump did add two sentences of condolences, the phrase signals that the shooting was routine background noise for him. He can spend years raging endlessly over perceived political slights. But when students are shot on a university campus, his response is effectively: This is just how life goes.
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