President Trump took to Twitter Friday morning to respond to the mass shootings in New Zealand, tweeting, "My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes [sic] out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The US stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!" NBC News reports his Twitterfeed had an earlier mention of the attack on two Christchurch mosques: The president tweeted a Breitbart News story after news of the shootings broke, though it was subsequently deleted.
Trump wasn't the only politician to draw headlines with New Zealand-related Twitter activity. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a CNN video of PM Jacinda Ardern speaking and wrote, "At 1st I thought of saying, 'Imagine being told your house of faith isn't safe anymore.' But I couldn’t say 'imagine.' Because of Charleston. Pittsburgh. Sutherland Springs. What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?" In a subsequent tweet, she clarified just who her final words were meant for: not Ardern, whom she "greatly admire[s]," but the NRA and its use of that phrase "to deflect conversation away from policy change during tragedies." (More mass shootings stories.)