Helaine Olen: A competent president would struggle – Trump has utterly failed
PRESIDENT Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visited Pittsburgh yesterday, the site of the massacre of 11 Jewish men and women attending services at the Tree of Life synagogue. The Pittsburgh Jewish community was divided about a Trump visit. The rabbi of Tree of Life said: “The President of the United States is always welcome.” Others – both members of the synagogue and in the greater community – beg to differ. A former president of the temple called Trump a “purveyor of hate speech,” and said: “I do not welcome this president to my city.”
This past week has been violent and fearsome. A Florida man was arrested for allegedly sending more than a dozen pipe bombs to Democratic politicians, CNN and activist left-leaning billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer. Last Wednesday, two elderly African American shoppers were murdered at a Kentucky supermarket by a white man who previously attempted to enter an African American church, and is reported to have told a bystander: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” And then Pittsburgh.
Even a competent president would struggle to calm this situation; Trump has utterly failed. On Saturday, at an appearance in Indiana hours after the synagogue shooting, he joked maybe he should have cancelled the appearance because of a bad hair day. On Sunday afternoon, he insulted Tom Steyer, who received one of the bombs. On Monday morning, he blamed the “Fake Media” for “the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our country” and called them “the true enemy of the people”.
And then he once again began to hurl invective about the caravan of migrants making its way toward the American border. “Many gang members and some very bad people are mixed into the caravan heading to our southern border” – the same caravan, of course, which appears to have inspired the Pittsburgh massacre. He also took a moment to call Andrew Gillum, Florida Democrats’ nominee for governor, “a thief” with no proof whatsoever.
None of this is an aberration. Trump has repeatedly engaged in nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. He was an avid birther, relentlessly questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the US. Toward the end of his campaign for president, he approved a commercial mentioning Soros, Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein and Federal Reserve chair Janet L Yellen – all Jews – with a voice-over making reference to “global special interests”, a long-time anti-Semitic libel. When violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, carried out by a group of white nationalists chanting slogans such as “Jews will not replace us”, “One people, one nation, end immigration” and “f*** you, faggots”, his initial instinct was to blame “both sides” for the death of peaceful protester Heather Heyer. He has called immigrants “animals” and called Mexican immigrants “rapists”.
We can be sure that whatever speech Trump gives about Pittsburgh, we know that he will return to the White House, pick up his smartphone and begin to tweet, all but erasing the words the speechwriters offered up. (© Washington Post)