Trump seemingly doesn't understand that at times like this, believers seek not God's favor but His comfort and mercy.
Great leaders also provide comfort in such moments, as Trump's predecessors did time and again. Remember George Bush after 9/11? Or Barack Obama after the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015? This level of caring is part of the president's job -- but it requires both a sense of responsibility and empathy for those who suffer. In Donald Trump, we have a president lacking in both.
As a politician devoted to performance, Trump is surprisingly incapable of even faking concern for fellow human beings. This is the President who needed empathy crib notes; "I hear you" was written on a card when he met with survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. He's also the President who couldn't acknowledge hurricane deaths in Puerto Rico and blamed Democrats when migrant children held by his administration died.
What many of these instances have in common is that Trump bears some responsibility for the suffering. A federal report reveals that there were staff shortages and a lack of properly trained personnel responding to the devastation brought by Hurricane Maria. The child migrant deaths included youngsters who were separated from the parents under Trump's cruel policy and held in unsuitable conditions.
And while the motives of the Dayton gunman are not yet known, the shooting in El Paso, like the one at the Tree of Life synagogue last October in Pittsburgh, has the markings of a hate crime according to El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen. (FBI El Paso Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie has said that more investigation is needed to determine whether the El Paso shooting was, in fact, a hate crime.)
El Paso provides the starkest example yet of the President's deficient character and leadership. In the aftermath of the tragedy, he tweeted about the "Terrible shootings in ElPaso," closing out the post with "God be with you all!" Fifteen minutes later, our President absurdly tweeted out encouragement to a martial arts fighter.
The tweet included a photo of the athlete in a red Make America Great Again cap and Trump wearing a giant grin. The good luck message accompanying the photo says everything about where Trump's mind was as first responders worked through the bloody scene at the El Paso Walmart.
If Trump is right about anything it is that "hate has no place in our country," which he remarked to the cameras after the incidents. But this ignores the fact that the President has done much to create the milieu of hate toward immigrants in America today.
In online writings posted before opening fire, the El Paso shooter allegedly complained that jobs are being lost to immigrants and first-generation Americans. And we all remember Trump's effort to engage in fearmongering about migrants, calling their arrival at the Southern border an "invasion."
This demonization of migrants was also used by the mass murderer at the Tree of Life synagogue, who attacked the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society on social media. This tragedy, which left 11 dead, wasn't enough to make Trump back off of his hateful talk. He continued it through the 2018 congressional election and seems to be making it a central element of his bid for re-election in 2020.
In fact, he has amped-up the divisive rhetoric, suggesting that four of his political opponents in Congress (three of whom were born in the United States) should leave the country and that one of his main critics, a congressman who is black, represents a district that is "a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess."
Trump's cynical calculus seems to have led him to the conclusion that he can benefit by dividing Americans along racial and ethnic lines -- and whipping the white voters who dominate his base into a frenzy of anger that will propel them to their polling places.
Long an admirer of Richard Nixon, who famously said, "People react to fear, not love," Donald Trump seems to hold the very same view. He has played on fear thus far in his presidency and his campaign ostensibly plans to continue the practice through the 2020 election.
That Trump is power hungry hardly requires saying. He has spent his life seeking wealth, power, and fame and when he ran for president, he offered himself -- not a thoughtful policy agenda -- as the main argument for his candidacy. "I alone can fix it," he said of America's problems. That he didn't really explain how he would do so should be proof enough that he ran not out of love of country, but love of himself.
A self-obsessed narcissist who cynically exploits fear, Trump has governed as he campaigned.
The El Paso gunman has allegedly said that his views predate Trump's campaign, yet he and other white nationalists likely see one of their own in the President -- as do gun fanatics who were doubtlessly encouraged when Trump caved to the National Rifle Association after promising survivors of the Parkland shooting that "we're going to be very strong on background checks... and then we are going to do plenty of other things." Today, private sales can still be conducted without checks in 33 states.
By invoking God (others will offer "thoughts and prayers") Trump's response to white nationalist terror avoids any mention of responsibility. The man who often complains that he doesn't get the credit he deserves consistently avoids it in moments like this. But like the blood spatter created when a bullet hit human flesh, some of the blame for El Paso will inevitably land on him. And he will never get it all off.
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