Dad asks that slaying not be politicized
Tibbetts’ father says don’t use her death to push ‘racist’ views
The father of Mollie Tibbetts, an Iowa college student whose body was found last month, has called on others to not “callously distort and corrupt” her death to promote a political agenda, a day after President Donald Trump’s eldest son blamed Democrats for her death.
Since authorities announced Aug. 22 that Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a farm worker from Mexico, was charged with first-degree murder in her death, politicians and pundits have used the arrest to push for stronger immigration laws.
In a column in the Des Moines Register, her father, Rob Tibbetts, encouraged the debate on immigration. “But,” he added, “do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist.”
The Register on Friday published a column by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., in which he blamed Democrats for Tibbetts’ death and said claims that conservatives and Republicans were politicizing her death were “absurd.”
“The reaction from some Democrats and others on the left to the murder of Mollie Tibbetts is as despicable as it is revealing,” he said. “Unfortunately, Mollie was not the first casualty of the left’s love for open borders. The radical policies of the Democrats have left a trail of human wreckage in pursuit of their open borders dream.”
In an email Sunday, Tibbetts said he initially wrote the column to rebut Trump’s claims and asked for the same decency that Vice President Mike Pence showed him and his family.
“I chose to call out the racists among us and ask people to aspire to higher American ideals,” he said.
In his column, Tibbetts apologized to the Hispanic community for being “beset by the circumstances of Mollie’s death.” Authorities have said that Rivera is from Mexico.
“The person who is accused of taking Mollie’s life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people,” Tibbetts wrote.
He urged readers to “turn toward each other with all the compassion we gave Mollie.”
“Let’s listen, not shout. Let’s build bridges, not walls,” he wrote. “We have the opportunity now to take heed of the lessons that Mollie, John McCain and Aretha Franklin taught — humanity, fairness and courage.”
It did not take long for politicians to seize on her killing and use it to promote their own platforms. On the day the discovery of her body was announced, President Trump, in a rally in West Virginia, used her death as a talking point about the state of immigration laws. He has repeatedly linked crime to illegal immigration, despite studies that show otherwise.
Mollie Tibbetts, 20, was last seen while on a run in her hometown, Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18. Surveillance video led them to Rivera, who they said later led them to her body.