(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump visited survivors of a pair of mass shootings that killed 31 people over the weekend, a solemn presidential duty that he and White House officials nevertheless managed to infuse with politics.
Trump spent much of Wednesday in private meetings with survivors of the attacks in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, as well as the doctors and nurses who treated them and local police. But he brought with him from Washington his usual grievances, assailing Joe Biden, Ohio Democrats who joined him at a hospital and the media.
Tweets were his main public remarks for the day, and journalists traveling with him were excluded from tours of hospitals in the two cities. His press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, insisted to reporters that the travel “wasn’t about a photo op for the president and the first lady.”
But White House social media director Dan Scavino, who accompanied Trump on his hospital tours, posted a dozen photos to Twitter showing a smiling president meeting with nurses and doctors, patients and law enforcement officers in Dayton. The president retweeted Scavino and posted a video of his Ohio visit.
Consoling Americans scarred by disaster or violence is a presidential art that Trump has never quite mastered. His trips are often marked by episodes that raise questions about his connection with people suffering tragedy -- throwing rolls of paper towels into a crowd of hurricane survivors in a Puerto Rico church; telling a North Carolina storm survivor that at least he “got a nice boat” after one washed up in his yard.
Twitter Jabs
Wednesday’s visits to Dayton and El Paso unfolded from the start with political overtones.
The president began his day with jabs on Twitter at Democrats and presidential contenders, complaints about his media coverage and then a surprising suggestion as he left the White House that he might buck the National Rifle Association and support gun-safety legislation.
White House officials may have thought they had reason to exclude journalists from Trump’s events. He has tense relations with mayors in both cities. The El Paso shooter posted a racist manifesto on the internet that echoed language Trump has used to describe immigrants and minority lawmakers, breeding accusations from Democrats that he helped to incite the violence. The president faced protests in the two cities for his racial and anti-immigrant rhetoric and his opposition to laws that would limit access to firearms.
Yet by the White House’s account of a visit journalists were barred from witnessing, none of those tensions surfaced in Dayton. Scavino said in a tweet that “the President was treated like a Rock Star inside the hospital.” Grisham later told reporters aboard Air Force One that Trump’s interactions with the city’s mayor, Nan Whaley, were “very warm.”
However, she and Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said at a news conference that they demanded the president press Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold a vote on House legislation that would expand background checks for gun buyers.
“I asked the president to promise to me and to the American people that he will sign that bill after he’s spoken out in support of it with Senator McConnell,” Brown said at a news conference. Trump didn’t make that commitment, Brown said, only saying “we will get things done,” according to the senator.
‘Disgraceful Politicians’
That provoked a sharp turn in the day’s tone. Scavino attacked the two Democrats in a tweet, calling them “disgraceful politicians, doing nothing but politicizing a mass shooting, at every turn they can.” Trump joined in, saying in a tweet that they were “misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital.”
But Brown in fact said that Trump was received well by patients and staff of the hospital -- “he did the right things and Melania did the right things,” he said. Whaley said “the victims and the first responders were very grateful that the president of the United States came to Dayton.”
While Trump traveled from Dayton to El Paso, Biden, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered his own harsh assessment of the president’s role in inciting the violence. He lambasted Trump in an Iowa speech for his remarks about immigrants and race, saying the president “fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.”
The president was watching. “Sooo Boring!” he said of Biden’s speech. In a subsequent tweet, he insulted Fox News anchor Shepard Smith.
In El Paso, Trump’s motorcade was greeted by protesters holding a large sign reading “Racist go home.” Journalists were again excluded from Trump’s tour of a local hospital, but were able to follow him at a law enforcement command center. Trump met with Glendon Oakley, a 22-year-old Army soldier who helped evacuate children from the scene of the El Paso shooting, according to Task & Purpose, a military- and veteran-focused news site.
“I wanted to meet this hero before I did anything,” Trump told reporters. Oakley thanked the president.
Trump then entered a roomful of law enforcement officials and thanked them for their response to the shooting. He called the attacker, who was arrested, a “coward. He gave up, just gave up.”
He mentioned that he had held a political rally in El Paso earlier this year, and couldn’t help but add a boast: “Could have sold it out four times,” he said of the arena. The city of El Paso says Trump’s campaign still owes it hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rally.
He reflected on his visits to the hospitals.
“The love, the respect for the office of the presidency,” Trump told reporters. “I wish you could have been in there to see it.”
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
POPULAR