WORLD Trump visits shot- up Scalise

PRESIDENT Trump has visited critically wounded Congressman Steve Scalise who was among those shot when a gunman opened fire on Republican politicians playing baseball.

Mr Trump made the surprise visit to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where Mr Scalise is being treated for his injuries following the shooting.

The President and First Lady Melania Trump brought two bouquets of flowers.

Tweeting after the visit, Mr Trump said Scalise was in “... very tough shape ... Pray for Steve!”

The hospital says Mr Scalise was shot in the left hip, after which “the bullet travelled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs and causing severe bleeding”.

Mr Scalise was among several people wounded yesterday when a rifle- wielding attacker fired on lawmakers on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington.

The attacker was shot and later died.

Vice- President Mike Pence has also been speaking with the victims of the attack. Mr Pence’s office says he spoke with the two injured members of the US Capitol Police, as well as the father of lobbyist Matt Mika, who was shot multiple times.

The man who opened fire on Republican politicians with an assault rifle was rabidly anti- Trump, asking if those gathered were Democrats or Republicans before shooting. James Hodgkinson, 66, sprayed the congressional baseball practice session in Alexandria, Virginia, with bullets.

Hodgkinson was then taken down by one of Mr Scalise’s security detail just after 7am ( local time) and later died in hospital.

The charity- supporting Congressional Baseball Game has been a bipartisan tradition for more than a century, emphasising friendly Democratic- Republican rivalry in a capital otherwise poisonous in its partisanship.

“You never expect a baseball field in America to feel like being back in a combat zone in Iraq,” said Ohio Representative Brad Wenstrup, an army reservist who served as a combat surgeon in Iraq and was on the field yesterday when the shooting began. “But this morning it did.”

The FBI is investigating Hodgkinson’s social media accounts, which show he loathed Mr Trump and Hillary Clinton, but loved Bernie Sanders.

Hodgkinson “apparently volunteered” to serve on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, the senator said.