Dayton mayor receives threats after Trump comment

DAYTON — Following a public spat with President Donald Trump, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley was assigned a security detail to protect her.

A two-person team of police detectives watched over the mayor around the clock for six days after she received angry and abusive phone calls and messages via email and social media.

The mayor’s security since then has been scaled back, but officials declined to provide exact details.

Trump visited Dayton Aug. 7, three days after a mass shooting in the city killed nine people and injured others. The president joined Whaley and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-ohio, to talk with victims’ families, survivors and first-responders at Miami Valley Hospital.

Whaley and Brown held a news conference afterward, where both said they urged the president to support and sign legislation in the Senate requiring background checks on gun purchases and other reforms.

“Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud,” the president later tweeted. “It bore no resemblance to what took place with those incredible people that I was so lucky to meet and spend time with.”

Whaley later appeared on CNN, where she told Anderson Cooper that she didn’t understand why the president responded that way, but she said his posts on Twitter show he’s a “bully and a coward.”

After that, furious and sometimes vitriolic messages started flooding Whaley’s social media accounts and email. The city also received calls from angry Trump supporters.

“Get the hell out of this country you disrespectful trash. Treason is death,” read one message. Another said, “You’ll face Christ one day and I hate to say this but I will have no sympathy for you when you go to hell.”

Whaley says she doesn’t know what she could have done differently.

“I respected the president and the office of the president, but I strongly want him to do something and the people of Dayton want him to do something, and so it’s my job to say that,” she said.