Shooting victim's family shuns President Trump in Pittsburgh as top officials decline to join him
PITTSBURGH — A mourning family doesn’t want to meet him. Leaders of his own party declined to join him. The mayor has explicitly asked him not to come. And yet President Trump plans to visit this grief-stricken city Tuesday, amid accusations that he and his administration continue to fuel the anti-Semitism that inspired Saturday’s massacre inside a synagogue.
The president and first lady Melania Trump are scheduled to arrive in the late afternoon, several hours after the first funerals are held for the 11 victims of the mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue. More than 1,300 people have signed up for a demonstration at the same time — declaring Trump “unwelcome in our city and in our country.”
Congressional leaders from both parties — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) — have all declined invitations to join Trump on his visit, according to officials familiar with matter. (McConnell’s office said the Kentucky senator “has events in the state and was unable to attend.”)
So have relatives of at least one of the victims.
Trump offered to visit with the family of Daniel Stein, a 71-year-old who had just become a grandfather when he was gunned down at Tree of Life. Stein’s nephew, Stephen Halle, said the family declined in part because of the comments Trump made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when he suggested the synagogue should have had an armed guard.
“Everybody feels that they were inappropriate,” Halle said Tuesday. “He was blaming the community."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/30/despite-calls-stay-away-trump-heads-pittsburgh-after-synagogue-massacre/?utm_term=.3a96c028fa96&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1
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