He was not welcome. On Wednesday, August 7, Donald Trump visited wounded people in the weekend shooting in Dayton, Ohio, where hundreds of protesters were waiting for him, before taking off for the theater of another tragedy. , El Paso, Texas, where his coming causes such skepticism, even hostility.
The US president arrived in the late morning with his wife Melania in Dayton, a town in the northern United States where a gunman killed nine people in the night from Saturday to Sunday, and immediately went to a hospital where treated some of the victims.
Hundreds of protesters were gathered near the school with the balloon "Baby Trump", an inflatable character depicting an angry baby boy with the effigy of the president, used in many events around the world. They waved signs urging the Republican billionaire to "oppose the NRA," the powerful gun lobby that blocks any attempt to regulate the gun market, and to ban assault rifles.
Legislative evolution on the carrying of arms
Before leaving the White House, Donald Trump however assured that there was "little appetite" in Washington to prohibit this type of weapons, involved in several blood baths, including that of Dayton. He said he was in favor of legislative changes to prevent people with mental health problems from owning a firearm, he told reporters in Washington.
The real estate mogul also reaffirmed that the recent killings had "nothing to do with him" and that those who accused him of stirring up racial hatred in the US were seeking "political profit" from their criticism.
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Since two young shooters have, within 13 hours of each other, 31 victims, the leader is expected to calm tensions and comfort a nation traumatized by these tragedies. But the conservative billionaire, who got himself elected by treating Mexicans as "rapists" and regularly evokes an "invasion" of the United States by Central American migrants, is singled out.
Especially because the term "invasion", used by the extreme right around the world, was taken by the young author of the slaughter of El Paso in a manifesto put online before his passage to the act, fatal to 22 people including at least seven Mexican nationals. The language of the president is "toxic" and fanned "the flames of white supremacy", was still denouncing, Wednesday afternoon, the favorite of the Democratic primary Joe Biden in a speech whose extracts have already been made public.
"Low profile"
After his visit to Dayton, Donald Trump must fly to El Paso, where he could also be heckled by critics. The President's advisor, Kellyanne Conway, said that he was going to both cities to "convey the condolences of a nation that was bruised and outraged", "thank first aid for their heroism" and "meet the victims". "He does what the presidents do" in case of tragedy: "go on the field," she added, assuring that he kept "a low profile" to allow the country to "heal its wounds".
In Pittsburgh last October, a few days after the worst antisemitic attack in the recent US history in a synagogue (11 dead), more than 1,500 people of all ages and denominations had called on the president to give up his inflammatory diatribes during an unprecedented event in such a tragic context. "Trump's lies kill"; "The words count" had notably chanted the demonstrators.
With AFP