NYT: ‘Was Trump’s El Paso Visit A Turning Point?’

Donald Trump’s efforts to “act” as comforter in chief, a duty which falls to presidents when there’s a national tragedy, was a farce. He went through the motions of flying to Dayton and El Paso, leaving a string of wise cracks and taunts of his political enemies in his wake, on a day which should have been devoted strictly to mourning. In the El Paso hospital, he made nice nice for a few minutes, talking about the “incredible” and “fantastic” hospital staff, and then he reverted to type, dissing Beto O’Rourke, calling him “crazy” and saying that in dueling rallies the two had had a few months earlier, that O’Rourke had “like 400 people in the parking lot.” Trump’s crowd was much bigger, he assured those present, and certainly the hospital staff was riveted hearing about that.

Disrespecting a politician in his home town is inexcusable on it’s face, but in the aftermath of a mass murder there, it’s inexecrable — but it’s vintage Trump. No matter what, no matter where, it’s all.about.him. Here’s the video, if you haven’t seen it — and bear in mind not one of the hospitalized victims wanted to meet with the man.

This is absolutely disgraceful! More so bc NONE of the hospitalized victims in EL Paso would meet w/Trump, so he had two discharged pts come back to the hospital for his grossly inappropriate campaign video paid for illegally by taxpayers. #TrumpHospitalFarce

— MakeGOPDisappear;BanVotingMachines (@baobann) August 8, 2019

The trip to the two grief-struck cities was merely a campaign commercial to Trump. He and his aides bragged about how he was “treated like a rock star” and of course there was the obligatory lie about crowd size, what else? El Paso Times:

When his rally got underway, the president said that “69,000 signed up to be here. The arena holds about 8,000.”

Trump thanked the fire department for getting 10,000 people in the El Paso County Coliseum, before noting the crowd that gathered outside for his rally.

“Tens of thousands of people are watching the screens outside,” Trump said.

People are dead and injured and this guy is worrying about audience size. Here’s the fire department’s version of the facts, from the Senior Editor of ProPublica:

El Paso Fire Department just told us that Trump's statement about them allowing 10,000 people inside is incorrect. Spokesman says coliseum holds 6,500 and that is how many were allowed in building. #TrumpElPaso

— Zahira Torres (@zahiratorres) February 12, 2019

Trump is framing the entire trip in glowing terms, talking about how much he was loved and venerated. El Paso resident and author Richard Parker sees Trump’s trip there very differently. New York Times:

Along the president’s route from the airport to a hospital, people lined the roads to greet him — largely with rejection. “What’s more important?” Asked one man’s sign. “Lives or re-election?” American and Mexican flags sprouted together in the August heat. Signs with quotes bearing his name came back to haunt him: “We cannot allow these people to invade our country.” “Not Welcome” covered a stage at a park where people protested the president. The El Paso Times ran a black front page with this headline: “Mr. President, We Are Hurting.” […]

As if to symbolize just how out of touch Trumpism is here and in much of America, a sole woman approached the makeshift memorial at the Walmart where 22 people died. She wore a bright red MAGA hat, and quickly over 30 people surrounded her chanting: “Take it off! Take it off!” She refused, yelling back that the president should be accepted here — only to be drowned out. Later, young people appeared, dressed in black, chanting: “white violence, White House.”

Something is shifting. Mr. Trump may not have felt it during his few hours in town, but walking around, you couldn’t miss it. The El Paso massacre brought together the most active of America’s shifting tectonic plates: racism, assault weapons, a national Latino population of 60 million now with a target on its back, Mr. Trump’s white nationalism and his awful manners for a country in mourning.

Another president might have been sensitive enough to sense the shift, and changed course accordingly — played the convener, the unifier. Instead, Mr. Trump displayed just how small he is, no matter how big his mouth or powerful his office. He never once appeared in public. By 6:01 p.m., after just a little more than two hours, he was safely aboard Air Force One again and it was wheels up into the sky. But he is a shrinking president, stuck in a racist past, flying over a changing America. And I think we — or most of us — are all El Paso now.

As has been noted by the above author and others, the twin tragedies of last weekend involved a confluence of factors; white supremacy, immigration, and gun control chief amongst them. It was another explosive battle in the raging cultural war in America, which has always been with us, but which in the era of Donald Trump has polarized the nation into two tribes as never before.

The 2020 election will not only be a referendum on Trump, it will be a statement of who we are as Americans. It’s going to go one way or the other; either the melting pot concept and liberty for all will triumph over the darker, toxic aspects of the cultural id, which is in full manifestation with Trump in the White House. Or, we’ll find out that tolerance and inclusivity are only cultural myths, and who we really are is a nation of white supremacist barbarians, and “hate the other” has replaced E Pluribus Unum as our national motto. Time will tell. And the entire world is watching with bated breath to see how it goes.