Trump’s do-over lands with a thud
WASHINGTON— Like Heather Heyer, the paralegal and protester killed in Charlottesville, Kate Steinle was 32 when she died.
“Look at Kate. Beautiful Kate,” Donald Trump said, his voice softening, in a campaign speech last year. “Illegal immigrant, five times came across the border, and shot Kate.”
Trump then lamented the murder of Jamiel Shaw,17, by another man in the country illegally. “An unbelievable young boy,” Trump said. “Good student. Was going to go to college on a football scholarship. Maybe Stanford. And he was shot in the face three times by a guy that did it because he was just told to shoot somebody.”
When he wants to be, this president is a vivid storyteller. Talking about crimes committed by Muslims and undocumented Hispanics, Trump has used evocative adjectives and anecdotes to emphasize the depravity of the offenders and the humanity of the victims.
An alleged white supremacist is accused of killing Heyer on Saturday. On Monday, Trump described her with just one generic word. “Young.” After two days of withering criticism from across the political spectrum, Trump finally condemned white supremacists. In a White House attempt at a do-over for his widely denounced first try on Saturday, Trump called racism “evil” and identified “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But the rhetorical shift appeared to many observers as begrudging, a half-hearted attempt to quell the furor that erupted when he faulted bigotry and violence “on many sides.”
“It’s pretty clear he didn’t want to do this, or he would have done it before today,” said Cody Keenan, who was chief presidential speech writer to Barack Obama, in a message to the Star.
In a marked departure from post-- tragedy convention, Trump began the five-minute speech with seven sentences of boasting about his economic record.
He uttered just two sentences about Heyer, saying nothing about her life and lapsing into the passive voice in describing what happened to her in Charlottesville, Va.
“Two days ago a young American woman, Heather Heyer, was tragically killed,” he said. “Her death fills us with grief, and we send her family our thoughts, our prayers and our love.”
Keenan, who still works for Obama, said the former president tried in such addresses “to find a way to pay tribute to someone and what they cared about.” And two days, he said, is “an eternity” to take for a perfunctory statement like Trump’s.
Obama’s speech on the Sandy Hook school shooting, one of the most memorable addresses of his presidency, was written in two days, Keenan said.
“I think a big difference is that Obama would likely have gone to Charlottesville today,” Keenan said. “I don’t think Trump could have even if he wanted to.”
Douglas Brinkley, the prominent presidential historian, said Trump’s second attempt was “very marred” by his unusual introduction.
“The lead for the president’s talk today needed to be about Charlottesville. This will be known to history as his Charlottesville address to the nation, round two. And by self-promoting himself right out of the gate, it did a disservice to the victims of Charlottesville,” Brinkley told the Star. “He couldn’t let go of it being about Trump puffery out of the gate. And then the death became secondary.”
Trump, he said, seemed to be attempting to “not alienate a single person in his base while trying to calm the mainstream media and GOP senators down.”
Trump did appear to satiate Republican legislators, but expressed frustration that he was still being criticized by others.
“Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied . . . truly bad people!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday evening.
After meeting with FBI director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump announced a civil rights investigation into what he called a “deadly car attack.” Unlike Sessions, he did not declare the attack an act of terrorism.
James Alex Fields, seen standing with white supremacists in Charlottesville, has been charged with second-degree murder. He was denied bail on Monday.
His mother repeatedly called police about him in 2010 and 2011 to accuse him of beating her, The Associated Press reported.
Trump, sticking to his prepared text, asked Americans to choose love and unity over hate and division. He said “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence” has “no place in America.”
“And as I have said many times before, no matter the colour of our skin, we all live under the same laws, we all salute the same great flag and we are all made by the same almighty God,” he said.
But Trump’s first act Monday called into question his sincerity. Before his speech, he tweeted a biting remark about Ken Frazier, the Black CEO of Merck and Co., who resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council “to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” (Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stepped down from the council later the same day.)
“Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” Trump wrote. He added another shot at Merck six hours after the speech.
And in remarks to Fox News on Saturday, Trump said he was “seriously considering” issuing a pardon to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court for ignoring an order to stop arresting people he merely suspected were illegal immigrants.
His musings on Arpaio were published less than an hour after his speech on Charlottesville.