Like Westboro funeral trolls who show up to display signs shaming the dead, Trump will go to Pittsburgh on Tuesday at 4pm ET to garner political support while claiming that he’s paying his respects.
The trip is currently scheduled for three hours from arrival in Pittsburgh to a WH return which gives him as much time as he had when he he paid respects for the Las Vegas massacre.
He’s probably hoping there will be some kind of “mob” protest, distracting from his complicity. He will more likely visit the wounded police officers, because he’ll dispatch Jarvanka to meet families.
Expect a carefully crafted, brief statement with no wandering off-script, but it’ll be all about the photo-op. If Bill Shine is smart, he’ll get Trump to feign tearing up at the crime scene even if it didn’t work for Huckabee Sanders at her presser.
When Barbara Bush didn't want him at her funeral, and John McCain didn't want him at his funeral, one wonders why he’s unwelcome.
The combative nature of the WH briefing highlighted the awkwardness of the moment for Mr. Trump, who has shrunk from the task of expressing empathy and moral clarity at times of national challenge, and who had to be lobbied by his daughter Ivanka Trump and Mr. Kushner to issue a powerful statement against anti-Semitism after the shooting.
It came as Pittsburgh’s mayor, William Peduto, made a plea that the president stay away while the still-grieving city buried its dead, and as some of the president’s critics suggested that he should not come at all unless he changed his tone.
“I do believe it would be best to put the attention on the families this week, and if he were to visit, choose a different time to be able to do it,” Mr. Peduto said.
Bend the Arc Pittsburgh, a progressive group, wrote an open letter on Monday to the president, saying, “President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism.”
www.nytimes.com/...
In the Trumpian view, like the Nazi denaturalization of German subjects denying identity takes many forms, like mocking Elizabeth Warren among other strange generalizations based on sterotypes.
2. First we had the ineffable Kellyanne Conway saying that the synagogue massacre was an example of "anti-religiosity" spurred by late-night comedians:
3. Then Mike Pence invited a Christian "rabbi" to deliver a prayer -- one that didn't name the dead in the Tree of Life synagogue but rather Republican candidates
4. Jeff Sessions made a comment similar to Kellyanne Conway, that this was an assault on all religions. Again with the effect of removing the synagogue massacre from the category of an anti-Semitic crime to a more generic offense.
5. All of this adds up to a pattern, one seen earlier when Trump White House released statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that didn't mention Jews.
6. So: let's be clear: the Saturday massacre was the most lethal anti-Semitic massacre ever on American soil. The alleged gunman from all evidence had deeply imbibed anti-Jewish hatred. His goal was a specific one of killing Jews, not generic anti-religiosity.
7. The particular idea that spurred on the killer (Jews as mastermind bringing in non-whites to destroy whites) is not generic anti-religiosity but an anti-Semitic trope with deep roots, a variant of Nazi myth of udeo–Bolshevism.
8. The Pittsburgh massacre can only be understood through the specificity of Jewish history and a very particular type of anti-Semitism. In their public statements, the Trump administration is intent on denying that specificity.
9. A good analogy is how foes of "Black Lives Matter" responded with "All Lives Matter." An adoption of a spurious universalism that is designed to shut down particular voices speaking of particular problems.
10. So what's going on here? Why this pattern of de-emphasizing the Jewish particulars? The worst case answer is anti-Semitism, either deliberate or unconscious. But there are other possible answers.
11. The most benign possible answer is that this is the common way that Gentiles of all stripes handle anti-Semitic crimes: try to make them more "relatable" and "universal" -- i.e. early version of Diary of Anne Frank which erased some Jewish references.
12. A more specific answer is timing and politics. We're a week out from the mid-terms. Talking about anti-Semitism doesn't help the GOP and could (given stoking of Soros conspiracy theories) hurt them. Their voters are evangelicals. Make it about anti-religiosity.
13. I think it's really important for reasons to go beyond partisan politics to resist the erasure the Trump administration is engaged in. That resistance has to also oppose the tendency towards a facile ecumenicalism from some non-Trump people.
14. The proper understanding of the Tree of Life massacre is that it a Jewish event: fuelled by the particular anti-Semitism that scapegoats Jews for social unrest. We should oppose all forms of bigotry but can't fight anti-Semitism unless we name it as such.