Trump pays visit to Pittsburgh
One stone and one white rosebud for each victim. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump paid homage Tuesday to each of the 11 people slain in the worst instance of antiSemitic violence in American history. As the Trumps placed their tributes outside the Tree of Life synagogue, protesters nearby shouted that the president was not welcome.
The emotional, dissonant scene reflected the increasingly divided nation that Trump leads, one gripped by a week of political violence and hate and hurtling toward contentious midterm elections that could alter the path of a presidency.
On their arrival in Pittsburgh, the Trumps entered the vestibule of the synagogue, where they lit candles for each victim before stepping outside. Shouts of “Words matter!” and “Trump, go home!” could be heard from demonstrators gathered not far from where a gunman had opened fire on Saturday.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who had been conducting services when the shots rang out, gestured at the white Star of David posted for each victim. At each, the president placed a stone, a Jewish burial tradition, while the first lady added a flower. They were trailed by first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who are Jewish.
Near the synagogue, flowers, candles and chalk drawings filled the corner, including a small rock painted with the number “6,000,011,” adding the victims this week to the estimated number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The Trumps later spent more than an hour at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where some of the victims are recovering. The couple’s motorcade passed several hundred protesters on the street and a sign that said “It’s your fault.” Inside, Trump visited with wounded police officers and spent an hour with the widow of victim Dr. Richard Gottfried, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Trump stepped into the role of national consoler, a title he wears uncomfortably, with his visit to the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood. More at home waging partisan warfare than assuaging America’s grief, Trump has shied away from public displays of unity in the wake of other tragedies.
Sanders said Trump did not speak publicly Tuesday to denounce anti-Semitism because he has spoken about it before.
“He wanted today to be about showing respect for the families and the friends of the victims as well as for Jewish Americans,” Sanders said.
Questions have long swirled about the president’s credibility as a unifier. Since his 2016 Republican campaign for the White House, Trump has at times been slow to denounce white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other hate-filled individuals and groups that found common cause with his nationalistic political rhetoric.