Yes, Trump should be welcomed in El Paso
Michael Lindenberger says Trump should be given a chance in El Paso despite history of saying the wrong thing. He might just surprise us.
Beto O’Rourke has said a lot of things right since Saturday morning, when a terrorist from the Dallas suburbs went to war on El Paso. Visibly moved and hopping mad, Beto unleashed salty language at reporters asking if he thought the president’s rhetoric was racist.
“What do you think?” O’Rourke responded. “You know the (stuff ) he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals.”
It was a flash of the old off-the-cuff Beto, the one who wowed audiences and voters in last year’s narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz.
But Beto’s dead wrong when he says that President Trump, who is traveling to El Paso Wednesday, is not welcome there.
Of course he’s welcome. He’s the president, and when he arrives, he’ll be representing that office. That always deserves respect — or at least a cordial greeting. Someone running for that office ought to understand that.
What happened at the El Paso Walmart was a national tragedy, and it’s part of a growing national emergency. Only a president can truly address those developments with the solemnity they require.
Plenty disagree. But I also know what it’s like when a lone killer targets your city and leaves it with bodies and rage and feelings of profound helplessness.
That happened on July 7, 2016, in Dallas, where I was living at the time. During an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter march, a disaffected loner determined to make a statement against police violence opened fire on officers.
Five officers were killed before Dallas police killed him with a robot carrying a bomb. Dallas was devastated, even as people there drew together for comfort.
A few days after the shootings, President Obama arrived and delivered a deeply personal address to a packed audience. His speech was an act of healing that brought many in the audience to tears.
Trump is no Obama, and more often than not when he has opened his mouth, it’s been to say precisely the wrong thing. He tends to make the occasion about himself, or to demonize others.
Sometimes, though, he says the right thing. Like when he told North Carolina it had gone too far with its bathroom bill. Or when he told Cruz during a GOP debate that America shouldn’t let people “die on the streets” for lack of health care.
Did he mean any of those things? I don’t know. History has proven he wasn’t willing to fight for any of them.
The president said some good things Monday at the White House. He condemned racism and white terror. But he also blamed the news media for the murders, and he expressed no remorse for the way his own rhetoric has boosted hate.
None of us, though, need to remain in the ruts we create for ourselves. Wednesday is an opportunity for Trump to write a new chapter in his presidency, a moment to say the right things — and mean them.
First Word pieces are short commentaries by individual members of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. While they tend to reflect the board's values, they exhibit the author's perspective rather than the institutional view. Lindenberger is deputy opinion editor.