In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, there are a lot of things we should be doing. For example, we should talk about the victims, their families, the survivors and what they’re enduring, any number of things.

However, if there’s one thing we’ve seen with the American media, it’s that they’ll never miss a chance to throw a punch at their ideological opponents.

That’s what CNN’s Jack Tapper tried to pull on El Paso Mayor Dee Margo recently. Unfortunately for the TV host, Margo presented a master class in how elected officials should reply to such efforts:

Margo batted away Tapper’s efforts to corner him by correctly pointing out that he didn’t feel qualified to speak on certain topics.

Of course, he probably is just as qualified as anyone to give his opinion on any number of topics. However, what Margo didn’t say was that right then, his opinions weren’t relevant. Frankly, in the aftermath of something like this, remarkably few opinions are. In Margo’s city, 20 people had just been murdered in cold blood by a maniac who appears to have been motivated by hate.

The fact that Tapper was trying to push this is just indicative of how the modern mainstream media is more about trying to editorialize and pontificate than about actually reporting.

Mayor Margo was a guest who could have provided any number of salient facts about the shooting which took place in his community. He could update viewers on the investigation into the killer’s motivations, the explained discrepancies between early reports that there were multiple shooters and current reports of just the one, any number of things.

Instead, Tapper wanted Margo to editorialize and try to put him on the spot regarding members of Margo’s own party.

None of that is relevant. If I was a resident of El Paso, I don’t care what the mayor thinks about Trump’s anti-illegal immigration rhetoric or whether this is terrorism or not. What I’d care about is how the community is responding to the crisis that unfolded in a Walmart of all places.

Margo is apparently keeping his priorities in line, as he should.

The truth of the matter is that no one is asking Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley if the left’s rhetoric is responsible for the shooting in her community, so why ask Margo? Their opinions on the subject don’t really matter…unless the media thinks they have a way to help build the narrative.

While disgraced Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel jumped up early to blame the NRA for Parkland, the truth is that we don’t need officials to tell us their opinions. Right now, there are more than enough people offering up those, and it’s a shame the media has forgotten that it’s supposed to be driving not by those opinions, but by hard facts.

Facts that Tapper could have focused on, but instead he wanted sensational headlines of perhaps a Republican mayor expressing outrage at the Republican president.

Instead, we got to see a master class in just how mayors should handle such horrific events.

Hat tip: Townhall