August 9, 2019

Trump’s Response to Two Gun Massacres Was a Full Week of Disasters

A photo of the president flashing a thumbs-up as he posed with an orphaned baby is being widely condemned.

As President Donald Trump departed the White House on Friday for a Hamptons fundraiser, a photo taken during Trump’s visit to meet with victims of the El Paso, Texas, shooting was going viral.

“This photo is so hard to look at,” Jon Lovett of Pod Save America tweeted. “The thumbs up. The wrongness of all of it.”

“This is obscene,” another journalist wrote. 

The image, which was first posted on the First Lady’s account, showed the president smiling and flashing a thumbs-up, as he posed with a baby who was orphaned in the El Paso, Texas shooting. The photo quickly sparked condemnation and palpable disgust on social media. It came as the latest in a series of serious missteps to come out of Trump’s visit to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, where 31 people were killed last weekend in mass shootings.

Earlier, a cellphone recording emerged showing Trump bragging about the crowd size of a rally he held in El Paso months earlier while touring the hospital. “I was here three months ago…That place was packed,” Trump said. “That was some crowd—and we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot.”

The hospital visit was just one of many forums where Trump, in the face of two national tragedies, appeared squarely focused on himself this week.

Just hours before arriving in Dayton on Wednesday to commemorate the shooting there, Trump tweeted an attack at a prominent political opponent from El Paso: “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement—& be quiet!”

Later, Trump lashed out at Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), angrily claiming they had “totally misrepresented” his visit.

“I’m really confused, we said he was treated very well,” Whaley said in response to Trump’s tweet. “I don’t know what they’re talking about ‘misrepresenting.'”

“Oh well. He lives in his world of Twitter.”

Trump concluded the week much as he started: vaguely signaling his support for strengthening background checks. “I will tell you I spoke to Mitch McConnell yesterday,” Trump told reporters. “He’s totally on board. He said, ‘I’ve been waiting for your call.'”

A spokesman for McConnell clarified that the Kentucky lawmaker had yet to endorse any specific gun reforms. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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