YouTube

It’s stunning to watch the entire conservative movement line up to deflect the conversation about the Charleston church massacre away from the truly relevant issues — racism and guns — to ridiculous disconnected talking points like “religious freedom” and now, thanks to former Texas Governor Rick Perry (one of the many GOP presidential candidates): overuse of prescription drugs.

And that’s not even the worst thing Perry said; in the same interview with Steve Malzberg of Newsmax, he called the attack “an accident.” (One of Perry’s spokesmen quickly put out the word that he simply “misspoke,” of course.)

“This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said.

Instead of talking about guns, Perry said, we should be talking about prescription drugs: “Also, I think there is a real issue to be talked about. It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”