August 7 was supposed to be a day of mourning and comforting.
Mourning—for the 32 gun massacre victims slaughtered on August 3 and 4 in, respectively, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. And comforting—by President Donald Trump, who planned to visit the hospitalized survivors of those shootings.
The day turned out to be one of vitriol by and self-aggrandizement for Trump.
In El Paso, none of the patients being treated at University Medical Center agreed to meet with Trump.
Although reporters were barred from covering Trump’s visit, a photo posted on Twitter by Melania Trump captured perhaps the most incendiary moment of his day.
It showed Trump flashing a thumb’s-up while posing with the two-month-old son of Andre and Jordan Anchondo—both of whom had been shot by the El Paso gunman, Patrick Wood Crusius.
Donald and Melania Trump posing with orphaned baby
From the smiles on the Trumps’ faces, a viewer might think the boy belonged to them.
Outrage erupted almost immediately on Twitter:
Greg Pinelo: “This is a photo of Trump grinning while Melania holds a baby orphaned by the shooting. A baby who was taken from home and forced to serve as a prop at a photo-op for the very monster whose hate killed her/his parents. I would need 280,000 characters to say how furious I am.”
Bryan William Jones: “I am genuinely confused and horrified by this image. Am I taking this the wrong way? Why is Trump and Melania posing, GRINNING, and giving a thumbs up with the infant who’s parents were murdered by the shooter in El Paso. Seriously… WTH is going on?”
What was going on was this: The orphaned child, named Paul, had been injured during the shooting, breaking his fingers when his mother, Jordan, fell on him. She died trying to protect him. Her husband, Andre, died trying to shield her from the bullets.
The baby’s uncle, Tito Anchondo, had brought Paul back to the hospital—reportedly at the request of the White House—for a photo-op with Trump.
Anchondo stands next to Donald Trump in the photo. Tito is a strong supporter of Trump.
According to him, so was his brother, Andre: “I think people are misconstruing President Trump’s ideas. My brother was very supportive of Trump.”
And so, ironically enough, so was the killer—Patrick Wood Crusius—whose victims were mostly Hispanics.
Just 27 minutes before the massacre, Crusius had posted an online manifesto warning about a “Hispanic invasion.”
Its language was similar to that used by Trump: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought about by an invasion….
“In short, America is rotting from the inside out, and peaceful means to try to stop this seem to be nearly impossible.”
Another viewer of the photo who was thoroughly outraged by it was David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
Appearing on the August 9 edition of The PBS Newshour, Brooks said: “Well, there’s a photo, a still from that visit where he’s with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife.
“And Melania is holding the child. And he’s got this grin and the thumb up. And when I looked at that photo, I thought, the Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist? And I look at that photo, I think, well, he’s a sociopath.
“He’s incapable of experiencing or showing empathy. And, politically, it’s helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?
“And so I look at that as someone who is unloved and made himself unlovable and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn’t do the consoler in chief just because he doesn’t do that emotional range.”
This wasn’t the first time that Brooks had commented on Trump’s apparent incapacity for empathy.
On March 25, 2016, Brooks, again on The PBS Newshour, said: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.
“And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude toward women.”
Brooks may be the first conservative columnist to describe a Republican President as a “sociopath.” Given Trump’s behavior on what was supposed to be a day of national mourning, it isn’t likely to be the last time Brooks uses that word.
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“YEAH, IT’S TOO BAD YOU WERE SHOT. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT ME”
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2019 at 12:04 amOn the morning of August 3, 2019, a lone gunman killed 22 people and injured 24 others in El Paso, Texas.
On August 7, President Donald Trump flew to El Paso—allegedly to comfort the surviving victims of that massacre.
But what was officially intended to be a day of comforting the afflicted became one of Presidential egomania.
Trump initially praised the medical staff of the University Medical Center at El Paso: “The job you’ve done is incredible. They’re talking about you all over the world.”
But then he quickly pivoted to praise himself.
He said that he and his Democratic Presidential rival, Beto O’Rourke, had staged political rallies in El Paso earlier in February. And he mocked the relatively small size of the crowd that had attended the one by O’Rourke:
“I was here three months ago, we made a speech. That place was packed. …That was some crowd. And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot, they said his crowd was wonderful.”
Trump did not boast that he has still not paid the $569,204.63 his campaign owes to El Paso for police and public safety fees from that rally.
Three days earlier, on the morning of August 4, another gun massacre had rocked Dayton. Ten people were killed, including the gunman, and 27 others were injured.
But empathy for the victims—dead and living—was far from Trump’s mind as he spoke with medical staffers in El Paso:
“We had an amazing day. As you know, we left Ohio. And the love and the respect for the office of the presidency, it was—I wish you could have been in there to see it. I wish you could have been in there.”
John Olilver, an English comedian, political commentator and television host, offered a scathing review of Trump’s behavior: “Look, we all know how much Trump struggles to do the bare minimum of being a president, but it’s still genuinely shocking just how much he struggles to do the bare minimum of being a fucking person.
John Oliver
“Just consider the thought process that happened there: He visited a hospital filled with victims of a mass shooting and thought to himself: ‘Remember that other time when I was the center of attention and it was better?’ And then he thought: ‘Do you think anyone else remembers that?’ Then he thought: ‘I should remind them, right?!’ Then he thought: ‘Great idea!'”
From the outset of his Presidency, Trump has routinely made himself the center of attention on what should have been a somber occasion.
The first time this happened was on January 21, 2017—the day after his inauguration.
He visited the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to pay tribute to the men and women who discover—and counter—the deadly plots of America’s sworn enemies.
Now Trump stood before what, to CIA employees, was the agency’s most sacred site: The star-studded memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA officers who had fallen in the line of duty.
Donald Trump at the CIA
So Trump talked about—himself.
Here are the some excerpts:
….You know, when I was young and when I was—of course, I feel young. I feel like I’m 30, 35, 39. Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping— when we were in the final month of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young….
* * * * *
And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field.
I say, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, the field was—it looked like a million, million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there.
Crowds at Obama (left) and Trump (right) Inaugurals
And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.
* * * * *
So a reporter for Time magazine—and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right?
I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record….that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?
* * * * *
Former CIA director John Brennan thought Trump’s remarks were “despicable.”
That word is now widely being used to describe the man who, tweeted Beto O’Rourke, “helped create the hatred that made Saturday’s tragedy possible.”
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