Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump visits attack victims
President sees no appetite to ban assault style rifles
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is open to calling on Congress to return from recess to strengthen background checks for gun buyers but he sees “no political appetite” for banning assault rifles.
Trump’s comments came as he left the White House for visits to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, where 31 people were killed in two mass shootings over the weekend.
Trump arrived in Dayton on Air Force One shortly before 11 a.m. and was greeted by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, and other politicians from both parties.
His motorcade then headed to Miami Valley Hospital so he could “thank first responders and hospital staff, as well as meet with victims and families,” the White House said.
Speaking to reporters before he left Washington, Trump dismissed critics who have suggested that his rhetoric on race and immigration is partly to blame for a rise in hate-inspired violence such as that in El Paso.
“I think my rhetoric brings people together,” Trump said, adding that he is “concerned about the rise of any group of hate.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “Whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy.”
He called his critics “people who are looking for political gain.”
In tweets Monday, Trump called for “strong background checks,” and on Wednesday, he said he supports “background checks like we’ve never had before.”
Many Democrats, including much of the presidential field, advocate reinstating the now-expired assault weapon ban that was included in the 1994 crime bill.
“There is no political appetite for that at this moment,” said Trump, who has voiced support in recent days for “red-flag” laws, which allow police to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person deemed by a judge as posing a risk of violence.
In Dayton, where nine people were killed in a shooting early Sunday, the president and first lady Melania Trump spent time with wounded survivors and their families, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
Trump told them he was “with them,” she said. “Everybody received him very warmly. Everybody was very, very excited to see him.”
But outside Miami Valley Hospital, at least 200 protesters gathered, blaming Trump’s rhetoric for inflaming political and racial tension in the country and demanding action on gun control. Some said Trump was not welcome in their city. There were Trump supporters, as well.
Many protesters chanted “do something,” and some held a “Baby Trump” balloon.
Holding a sign that read “Not Welcome Here,” Lynnell Graham said she thinks Trump’s response to the shootings has been insincere.
“To me, he comes off as fake,” she said.
But in El Paso, where 22 people were killed in a shooting Saturday, Raul Melendez, whose father-in-law, David Johnson, was killed in the shooting, said the most appropriate thing Trump could do was to meet with relatives of the victims.
“It shows that he actually cares, if he talks to individual families,” said Melendez, who credits Johnson with helping his 9-year-old daughter survive the attack by pushing her under a counter. Melendez, an Army veteran and the son of Mexican immigrants, said he holds only the shooter responsible for the attack.
“That person had the intent to hurt people, he already had it,” he said. “No one’s words would have triggered that.”
OHIO OFFICIALS’ PLEA
In Dayton, the city’s Democratic mayor, Nan Whaley, and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined Trump on the visit to the hospital and said they each pressed the president to take more aggressive action to pass gun control legislation.
Brown and Whaley said the president refused to commit to signing a universal background check bill, but told them that he would “get things done.”
Brown said Trump “was received as well as you can expect by the patients.”
“They are hurting,” Brown said. “He was comforting. He and Melania did the right things. It’s his job in part to comfort people. I’m glad he did it.”
But in a news conference soon after Trump left for El Paso, Whaley added: “I’m not holding my breath. Too often we see inaction, because
they’re waiting just for time, to forget that nine people died in Dayton because of a gun that shouldn’t be legal, frankly.”
Flying on Air Force One, Trump criticized the senator and the mayor on Twitter, saying they had misrepresented what happened inside the hospital. “Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud,” the president wrote. “It bore no resemblance to what took place.”
Grisham, responding on Twitter from aboard Air Force One, said it was “genuinely sad” to see the lawmakers “immediately hold such a dishonest press conference in the name of partisan politics.”
The discord continued in El Paso. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, the Democratic lawmaker who represents the city, declined to meet with Trump. “I refuse to be a prop,” she said in an interview on CNN.
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas spoke to several hundred people at a separate gathering in El Paso on Wednesday. O’Rourke, a potential Democratic 2020 presidential rival, has criticized Trump as a racist instigator but also told those in his audience that the open way that the people of his hometown treat one another could be “the example to the United States of America.”
PRESSURE ON MCCONNELL
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is resisting pressure to call senators back from recess to address gun violence, despite wrenching calls to “do something” in the aftermath of the weekend shootings.
Instead, the Republican leader is taking a more measured approach, as GOP senators are talking frequently among themselves, and with the White House, in the face of mounting criticism that Congress is failing to act.
On Wednesday, Brown made a personal plea to Trump during his visit to “call on Sen. McConnell to bring the Senate back in session this week, to tell the Senate he wants the background checks bill that has already passed the House.”
House Democrats signed onto a letter urging McConnell to act immediately on the House-passed legislation, which would require federal background checks for all firearms sales and transfers, including online and at gun shows. In Kentucky, where McConnell is recuperating from a weekend fall that fractured his shoulder, activists have been demonstrating at his home and protesting at his downtown Louisville office.
“House Democrats are moving prayerfully and purposefully to advance action,” wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter Wednesday to Democratic colleagues. The Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., may take action during the recess on red-flag legislation to allow removal of guns from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.
In the meantime, Trump has been dialing up Senate Republicans about what is possible. Trump spoke at least three times with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who has long pushed a bipartisan background check bill with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.,
the GOP senator said.
Republicans are trying to build support for more modest measures, including red-flag bills from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that would allow friends and family members to petition authorities to keep guns away from some people. But those efforts are also running into trouble from conservatives, who worry about due process and infringing on gun owners’ rights.
GOP senators are also considering changes to the existing federal background check system, as well as strengthening penalties for hate crimes, Republicans said.
While many of those proposals have bipartisan support, Democrats are unlikely to agree to them without consideration of the more substantive background check bill.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Wednesday, “We Democrats are not going to settle for half-measures so Republicans can feel better and try to push the issue of gun violence off to the side.”
Manchin, who said he talked with Trump on Monday and Tuesday, said the president is “very committed to getting something done that will make a difference.”
At least one Republican, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who had voted against a House-passed background check bill in February, said in a statement after the shooting that he supports other gun limits, including banning the sale of assault weapons to civilians, limiting the size of magazines and enacting redflag laws.
Turner, whose district includes Dayton, said the “carnage these military-style weapons are able to produce when available to the wrong people is intolerable.”
Turner’s daughter and a family friend were at a bar across the street from where the shooting began in Dayton. Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Tim Elfrink, Felicia Sonmez and Allyson Chiu of The Washington Post; by Mitch Smith and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; and by Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, John Seewer, Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly and Bruce Schreiner of The Associated Press.