I disagree somewhat. People who follow Trump have some personal responsibility here. No one forces you to blindly follow anyone. As children, everyone's mother has asked them, " if so and so jumped off a bridge would you do it too?" when they got in trouble for blindly following. Even the Bible (Jesus) admonishes believers time and time again to not blindly follow religious leaders. God himself indulged Abraham questioning His will and his purpose on more than one occasion.

So nobody gets a free pass for being "led astray". Refusal to think things through does not equate to being unable to or spare one the consequences of the natural outcomes of their actions.

It does not take a college degree to realize that if you storm a government building protected by armed officers with a pack of hysterics chanting murderous intents, those armed officers are going to respond with increasing escalation to the point of shooting someone.

So yes, Donald Trump is responsible for Ashli Babbitt's death. But so are all the people who breached the building looking to murder the rightfully elected and so is Ashli Babbitt.

No disrespect to her family, I'm sure they grieve for her, miss her, and loved her. She made her choices, this was the result. Nobody forced her to embrace Trump ideology. She chose that.

I have to also add that as a soldier Babbitt would have been trained to not follow unlawful orders. Even from the President. She knew that. I've got a lot of respect for the military and veterans who have served. It gives me no pleasure to be critical here. But I'm not comfortable with soldiers who blindly follow clear illegality. They're the worst sort who cause harm and scandal again and again and again. I don't feel like her death was a great loss to the nation.

She shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have participated when things went sideways. She shouldn't have tried to breach a barrier against an armed officer under duress and outnumbered. She shouldn't have blindly followed a corrupt man like Trump. She should have thought about what she was doing. She shouldn't have jumped off that bridge just because all her Trump nut buddies did.

People were going to get killed from the start. That was the whole point of being there. It just wasn't who Ashli and her ilk planned on dying that day.