There's blood on your little hands

[struggle4progress]

By Charles Bethea
August 7, 2019

At a demonstration against President Trump’s visit to El Paso following the city’s recent mass shooting, protesters vowed to repudiate him at the ballot box.Photograph by Mario Tama / Getty
Around two-thirty on Wednesday afternoon, a maintenance man at the Radisson Hotel near El Paso’s airport hurriedly climbed the stairs to the roof of the building to watch as Air Force One touched down. Having the President in El Paso under the circumstances, the man, who is Hispanic and asked not to be named, told me, was a strange experience: “amazing, but also frightening.” A few miles away, a demonstration, planned over the previous forty-eight hours, was wrapping up at El Paso’s Washington Park, near a hospital where Trump would soon be visiting victims of last Saturday’s mass shooting. It was well over a hundred degrees outside, and more than a thousand people held up signs that offered messages—“Trump Not Welcome Here,” “There’s Blood On Your Little Hands,” “Make Racists Afraid Again”—as well as shade.

Charles Horak, a developer, and his son Joseph, a recent high-school graduate wearing a Beto O’Rourke hat, handed out nearly four hundred signs with fourteen of Trump’s most incendiary tweets and remarks—about invasion, Mexicans, and migrants—printed on them. The elder Horak told me that he had spent a few hundred bucks printing Trump’s inflammatory language to “reflect back to him and to the world his own words, and the gall that he has to come here to our city after what he has sown for two years. We’re reaping it, and we’re grieving.” He expressed anger that the President “thinks he can come here and robotically spout words of comfort to us—he’s an empty, hollow man. His own words convict him” ...

A man approached Horak for a sign and asked, “You got anything with that quote about the rapists and thieves?”

“Yep,” Horak replied, finding the sign and handing it to him ...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/theres-blood-on-your-little-hands-trumps-visit-to-el-paso-energizes-his-opponents

[struggle4progress]

1. Visits El Paso after racist massacre, facing hostility and stirring it

Todd J. Gillman, Alfredo Corchado, James Barragán

... "We had an amazing day," Trump said in El Paso. "The love, the respect for the office of the presidency — I wish you could have been in there to see it" ...

"We're a friendly, welcoming city," said Guadalupe Fresas. "But to have this man come here is too much. He's pushing our tolerance. We're mourning. Our kids go back to school next week, and they're scared. He's adding salt to the wound" ...

Trump falsely accused Sen. Sherrod Brown and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, both Democrats, of painting his visit in a bad light by asserting that he'd received a poor reception at the hospital. Neither had said that, at least in public. Brown told reporters after Trump's visit that the president seemed to provided comfort to patients, and that both he and the mayor had lobbied him to support a ban on assault-style weapons and other gun control measures ...

The White House did not allow journalists to witness any of the interactions, with press secretary Stephanie Grisham insisting that this was not a "photo op." The White House released its own official photos and video later.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2019/08/07/trump-heads-el-paso-after-racist-massacre-facing-hostility-stirring

[struggle4progress]

2. Attacks local leaders as he visits grieving cities

By Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Jenna Johnson and Felicia Sonmez
August 8 at 12:01 AM

EL PASO — On a day when President Trump vowed to tone down his rhetoric and help the country heal following two mass slayings, he did the opposite — lacing his visits Wednesday to El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, with a flurry of attacks on local leaders and memorializing his trips with grinning thumbs-up photos.

A traditional role for presidents has been to offer comfort and solace to all Americans at times of national tragedy, but the day provided a fresh testament to Trump’s limitations in striking notes of unity and empathy ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lashes-out-at-beto-orourke-and-the-media-ahead-of-visits-to-el-paso-and-dayton/2019/08/07/b0aa8afc-b8fb-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html

[struggle4progress]

3. Plays role of victim as he visits victims

Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Updated 08.07.19 8:06PM ET
Published 08.07.19 8:00PM ET

Shortly after he woke up at the White House on Wednesday, President Trump began preparing to travel to two different but similarly broken American cities. He was going there to comfort and visit the grieving communities, victims, and medical staff affected by recent high-profile mass shootings.

But as he sought to comfort victims of gun violence on Wednesday, the president and his team couldn’t help but play the role of victims themselves.

After tuning into Fox News and One America News Network, Trump tweeted about “Radical Left Democrats,” his political nemeses like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the “Fake News” that he’s “up against,” and the specter of “ANTIFA” street fighters. Later in the day, he railed against Democrats for negatively portraying the reception he received at a hospital (though they did no such thing) and—once more—cable news hosts for being less than glowing in their coverage.

It underscored a reality that’s become obvious to anyone who has ever worked for or even casually observed Trump: He’ll find a way to make nearly any national tragedy into an airing of his personal grievances, and neither he nor nearly anything else will change in the process ...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-plays-the-role-of-victim-as-he-visits-victims-of-dayton-el-paso-mass-shootings

[NCLefty]

4. I hope this follows him everywhere... forever.

People should be shouting, "Murderer!" every time he shows up anywhere.

[struggle4progress]

5. Your mission, should you choose to accept it ...

[Thekaspervote]

6. He is a murderer and he has thousands of accomplices. Gopeee, nra, putin