Angry protests greet Trump in Pittsburg
WASHINGTON : President Donald Trump visited Pittsburg on Tuesday to meet the families of those killed in the synagogue massacre and pay his respects, against the advice of some aides. He was abandoned by some Republican leaders and opposed by protestors who marched nearby, singing and chanting slogans.
Trump was accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump and his daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who is Jewish.
He was received by rabbi Jeffery Myers of Tree of Life synagogue but local officials, who had urged him to choose another day for the visit, stayed away. “Melania and I were treated very nicely yesterday in Pittsburgh,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “The Office of the President was shown great respect on a very sad & sol- emn day. We were treated so warmly. Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away. The Fake News stories were just the opposite-disgraceful!”
Trump visited the site of the massacre, where anti-semitic white supremacist Robert Bowers gunned down 11 people last Saturday, a holy day for Jewish people, met survivors at the hospital and the family of one of the victims. “The President was very moved by the visit and the time with the rabbi,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Tuesday. “He (the president) called it ‘very humbling and very sad’.”
She defended Trump’s decision to visit against the advice of some, saying, “He was also asked to come by some.” Tuesday was also the day on which the dead were buried.