The president was greeted at the airport by the city’s mayor and other officials. His motorcade passed two recreational vehicles adorned with pro-Trump signs and flags as well as one man standing outside of a store advertising survival supplies with a sign that appeared to object to so-called red-flag laws that prevent people with mental illness from getting guns: “Red Flag is Dystopic Future.”
Trump planned to visit El Paso, Texas, later in the day.
Trump attacks his critics on Twitter before visiting cities in mourning.
Trump began a day set aside for healing by delivering a series of political grievances against liberals and the media, once again using Twitter to exhibit the divisive language that has prompted some in El Paso and Dayton to protest his visits after horrific shootings in those cities.
The president’s press secretary said Trump planned to honor victims, comfort families and thank emergency workers “for their heroic actions.”
That wasn’t the message that Trump wanted to deliver Wednesday morning as he ignored calls from community leaders and residents to stay away. Around midnight, he attacked Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter, mocking him for having a “phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage” and boasting that he “trounced him” when Trump held a rally in El Paso in February.
In a tweet on Wednesday morning, the president attacked the “Failing New York Times” and the “Radical Left Democrats” over a headline in The Times. A few minutes later, Trump quoted a conservative television news outlet’s reporting that “the Dayton, Ohio, shooter had a history of supporting political figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and ANTIFA.”
“I hope other news outlets will report this as opposed to Fake News,” Trump wrote. “Thank you!”
But the president’s Twitter outbursts underscored the complaints of O’Rourke and others who have said Trump was not welcome in their communities because his presence would inflame tensions rather than soothe them. If the president has heard those complaints, he declined to change the combative tone he has embraced since the earliest days of his presidency.
On Monday, Trump delivered a short speech from a teleprompter in which he condemned “racism, bigotry, and white supremacy” and said that “hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”
Before he departed Wednesday, he said that “we’re going to take the opportunity to really congratulate the first responders.” And he dismissed criticism about his use of divisive language. “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said. “Our country is doing really well.”
It is unclear which president will assert himself in Dayton and El Paso — a healer in chief who brings a disciplined embrace of consolation and a rejection of hate, or a politically divisive chief executive who has spent years railing about the dangers from immigrants in the country illegally and stoking fear to rally his supporters.
Before leaving, he lashed out at the mayor of Dayton, calling her a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and of antifa, a radical leftist group. The president also rejected calls to abandon the way he talks about immigrants, saying that “illegal immigration is a terrible thing for this country” and insisting that “we have very many people coming in. They are pouring in to this country.”
Trump also used language that echoed his “both sides” comments after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, saying Wednesday that “I’m concerned about the rise of any type of hate. I don’t like it. Any type of supremacy, whether it’s white supremacy or antifa.”
Biden accuses Trump of “hate, racism and division.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday prepared to ratchet up his criticism of Trump after the El Paso massacre carried out by a suspect who authorities say wrote a white supremacist screed.
“In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation,” Biden will say, according to excerpts from remarks he planned to make in Burlington, Iowa.
“We have a president who has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation,” Biden will say. He will also say that Trump “offers no moral leadership,” has “no interest in unifying the nation” and that there is “no evidence the presidency has awakened his conscience in the least.”
“Instead,” Biden will say, “we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced a political strategy of hate, racism, and division.”
At the White House, Trump was asked to respond to another comment by Biden in which he said the president has more in common with George Wallace than George Washington.
“Well, Joe is a pretty incompetent guy,” Trump said. “I’ve watched his interviews. I’ve watched what he said and how he said it. And I wouldn’t have rated him very high in the first place. But Joe Biden has truly lost his fastball, that I could tell you.”
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., another candidate vying for the 2020 nomination, also spoke Wednesday morning at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015.
Booker urged Americans to embrace “courageous love” and appeared to choke up as he read the names of those who had died in the shooting four years ago.
“It’s with faith in God, in one another, and in who we can be that we come here together today,” he said, “not because of hate, but because of love.”
Trump’s plans in Dayton are not clear.
Ninety minutes before his plane was scheduled to land, there were few obvious signs in downtown Dayton of a presidential visit on the horizon.
At the Courthouse Square, where some protesters had discussed gathering, only a handful of reporters were milling around at 9 a.m. South of Dayton, in suburban Miami Township, a video sign on the side of the road said “Welcome President Trump” and “#DaytonStrong.”
Many details of the president’s visit remained unclear even as his arrival grew imminent. There had been no announcement from city officials on where he would go, and whether he would speak publicly, during his time in the city.
A day earlier, Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, a Democrat, said she planned to greet Trump, but also confront him about “how unhelpful he’s been on this.”
“His comments weren’t very helpful to the issue around guns,” Whaley told reporters Tuesday. “His rhetoric has been painful for many in our community.”
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said Tuesday that he supported the president’s decision to visit.
“I think it’s always appropriate for a governor, a president to go where there’s sorrow, go where people are hurting,” DeWine said.
Democrats say ‘red flag’ laws will not be enough.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said Wednesday that Democrats would insist that legislation to encourage states to adopt so-called “red flag laws” as a response gun violence be accompanied by a House bill requiring background checks on all gun purchasers.
Red flag laws allow authorities to obtain a special type of protective order — known as an extreme risk protection order, or ERPO — to remove guns from people deemed dangerous. Republicans, including Trump, are embracing the concept, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is drafting a bill to develop a federal grant program to help states pass and implement such laws.
“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,” Schumer said. “Democrats in the Senate will seek to require that any ERPO bill that comes to the floor is accompanied by a vote on the House-passed universal background checks legislation.”
Trump told reporters he was open to expanding background checks for gun purchases. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, has blocked consideration of the House bills.
The gunman’s motive in Dayton may not be tied to politics, authorities say.
Although the FBI is investigating “violent ideologies” that the Dayton gunman was exploring, authorities have said there was no evidence that his rampage had anything to do with his political views, which his friends have described as far-left.
The gunman, Connor Betts, who was killed by police, espoused leftist views online and in conversations with friends, promoting socialism and the idea that liberals should own guns. And a Twitter account that is believed to be his but has not been confirmed by authorities showed support for antifa, the loose group of people who call themselves “anti-fascists” and often believe that violence against people they view as “fascists” is justified.
In the wake of the mass shooting that killed nine and wounded more than two dozen others, conservatives have pointed out that the Twitter account that may be associated with the gunman also expressed support for Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sharing one post that said they were the only two acceptable candidates in the race for president.
Earlier this week, a federal law enforcement official said the FBI was looking at whether the gunman was associated with incel, or involuntary celibate, groups, which are generally made up of misogynists who disparage women online, in part for refusing to have sex with them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.