Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Columnist For Adelson-Owned Newspaper Blamed ‘Muslim Terror’ For Vegas Shooting

A columnist for a newspaper owned by billionaire mega-donor Sheldon Adelson repeatedly alleged on Sunday and Monday that the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas was perpetrated by Muslims—even after the police denied any connection to international terrorist organizations.

Wayne Allyn Root, a self-proclaimed “Jew turned evangelical Christian” who was the the Libertarian Party’s 2008 nominee for vice president, joined the Las Vegas Review-Journal shortly after it was purchased in 2015 by a mysterious unknown owner, who was eventually revealed to be Adelson.

In the hours after the Vegas attack, which turned out to be the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, Root tweeted, “This is real thing. Clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack. PRAY for our Vegas police. PRAY for victims. VERY bad. Awful.”

(He also tweeted that sources were telling him that there were multiple shooters—which turned out to be false.)

Although ISIS claimed credit for the attack, local police said that gunman Stephen Paddock had no known ties to terror groups. But Root doubled down.

“Media has not connected dots. TWO lone wolf Islamic terror attacks on same day in France & Canada. ISIS makes sense,” he wrote.

Laura Loomer, another Jewish journalist with ties to the alt-right, also tied Paddock’s girlfriend, named by police as a “woman of interest,” to Muslim terror.

“There is still a connection to Islam. So don’t rule that out yet. The woman of interest traveled to the Middle East in the past year,” she wrote.

The girlfriend, Marilou Danley, had traveled to Dubai. She was later cleared by police.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.