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Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso

Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso
Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso

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.”

He planned to visit El Paso, Texas, later in the day.

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.

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.”

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.

Before he departed Wednesday, 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.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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