It’s axiomatic that truth is a casualty of war. Inasmuch as El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, resembled war zones after two mass shootings over the weekend claimed the lives of 31 people and wounded dozens more, veracity was indeed collateral damage.

Even before the bodies were cold on Saturday in the aftermath of the El Paso mass shooting, presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, formerly a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, couldn’t help but blame President Donald Trump in part for the day’s tragedy.

“He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country,” O’Rourke predictably said of Trump. “And it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country, and it leads to violence.”

Other Democratic presidential contenders wasted little time in tying Trump to the massacre in El Paso.

“There is complicity in the president’s hatred that undermines the goodness and the decency of Americans regardless of what party,” Sen. Cory Booker said.

“I say to President Trump, please stop the racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said. “Stop the hatred in this country which is creating the kind of violence that we see.”

No doubt these and similar comments from others were informed by the El Paso shooter’s apparent motivations, which at least in part stem from racism and xenophobia, if the shooter’s online manifesto is to be believed.

That much was obvious if anyone had the misfortune of watching Monday’s episode of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. Show hosts and guests laid it on way too thick with their lachrymose and self-important pronouncements that Trump is a white supremacist responsible for the weekend’s dual mass shootings. Furrowed brows, pained expressions and crossed arms communicated the obvious moral superiority of the punditocracy as compared to Trump and his troglodyte supporters.

Meanwhile, the Ohio gunman – killed by police at the scene – described himself on social media as a “leftist” who supported Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Curiously, it seems there have been no calls blaming liberals in general or Warren specifically for the horrific actions of the killer.

And that’s as it should be. Of course, the same should also apply to Trump. Blaming Trump for the El Paso and Dayton shootings is unfair and logically untenable.

Let’s put the responsibility for these shootings where it belongs: squarely on the pieces of human detritus who willfully pulled the trigger and extinguished the lives of so many innocent people. That’s the truth.