The Daily - Two Cities in Mourning

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

President Trump traveled on Wednesday to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, where mass shootings killed 31 people. Our colleagues described the scene in both cities. Guests: Mitch Smith, who covers the Midwest for The New York Times, and Michael Crowley, a White House correspondent. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: President Trump began a day set aside for healing in Dayton and El Paso by lashing out at rivals, using the kind of divisive language that prompted protests in both cities even before he arrived.Across El Paso, some residents worried that Mr. Trump’s visit might do more harm than good.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, President Trump visits two cities in mourning. The scene in Dayton and El Paso. Dayton and El Paso. It's Thursday, August 8th. What's it like being down here and seeing the memorials and seeing this entertainment district kind of become this place of mourning? It's very somber. I mean, it's very

somewhat emotional still. Still a lot of grief. You can see it. You can feel it. Hear it. And it's going to take a while to recover from this, but now Dayton will. This is Mitch. Hey, Mitch, it's Michael. How are you? I'm good. Quite a day here in Dayton. Yeah. So, Mitch Smith, you're in Dayton talking to the people there on the day of the president's visit.

What exactly was the president walking into there? Sure. Well, President Trump landed in an Ohio that, in a remarkably short period of time, since nine people were killed in an entertainment district on Sunday morning, had started to move from anguish and grief and shock to calls for action and some concrete proposals on what action might look like. So the night of the vigil on Sunday, the governor, a Republican, kind of launched into the speech that every politician from either party gives after a tragedy like this. This amazing crowd is stunning. This goes on and on and on. And I think it's a real testament to the love and the resiliency of this great and wonderful community. It was kind of long on condolences and short on policy,

and the people in Dayton just weren't having it. Do something! We're here tonight. Do something! We know that we can help. I was standing probably half a block down and really couldn't hear a word he was saying. They were shouting over him.

He kind of bolted on with his feet, but you couldn't hear him. News of the day! News of the day! News of the day! News of the day! So Tuesday morning, I'm at the statehouse in Columbus, an hour and 15 minutes up the road. And again, he's coming to the microphone. We're in this closed press room, but someone in the hallway shouts, Do something! Good morning, everyone. Do something, that same cry that the vigil on Sunday.

Some chanted, do something. And they were absolutely right. We must do something. And that is exactly what we are going to do. Today, I'm announcing the following initiatives, the following actions. He came out with a series of policy proposals. We can do this. We can do the things that I outlined today.

That would include expanding background checks that would allow the police to take guns from people that a judge deems dangerous. Now's our time as a state to come together. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody come together. So around the same time that Governor DeWine is having his news conference, word starts to spread that President Trump is coming to Dayton the next morning. So Governor DeWine, he's a Republican. He's very supportive of this. He said it's part of the president's job to comfort people who are hurting to be there in times of tragedy.

The mayor of Dayton, she's a Democrat. His rhetoric has been painful for many in our community. She has a different take. And I think that people should stand up and say they're not happy if they're not happy that he's coming. So from the start, there's a division over the president's trip to Ohio. Yeah, so the same division we're seeing among Ohio's leaders on the president's visit is also playing out among Ohio's voters. Ohio, of course, as a whole, along a purple state, swung pretty hard toward President Trump. But this is a very purple area of a fairly purple state.

President Trump, but this is a very purple area of a fairly purple state. Dayton County voted for President Trump in 2016 by less than one percentage point. So it's about as purple as you can get. And so out on the ground on Wednesday morning, as the president's preparing to land... He is a liar. He's a hater. He's a racist. He's a misogynist. You're a hater. And he has been since he rolled down that golden freaking elevator. We have Republicans, people with Trump flags, people who are standing there with signs that say, Don't Trump, kind of standing right next to each other on the sidewalk, right next to these memorials, in this city that remains in a state of very fresh grief and shock. And all waiting to see, no one exactly knows where the president is going to go once he gets to town. All wondering if they're going to get a glimpse of the president himself.

And with very different things they would want to tell him if they did. So you live in Dayton then? We're south of Dayton. We're south of Dayton, okay. One of the first people I met was a man named Jay McGuire. You lived here a long time, or? Yeah, about 50-some years. Okay, I think that counts.

He used to stand on the corner, no signs of any type, just out there to see what's going on. He paid his respects, he said, to the nine people who died. I heard the news Sunday morning, my first call was to my youngest son. Sure. Because I know he freaked with, and, you know, that was 7 o'clock in the morning I woke him up. But I was glad to hear his voice. And he was okay?

Yeah. Thank goodness, okay. And so you were worried that he could have been one of the victims, okay. Well, my other son just missed Las Vegas because he got called back in to do a flight. He's a pilot. And he would have gone to that concert. So, you know. Oh, my gosh. It's getting too close to home is what I'm starting to feel.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, as I'm sure you know, the president's landing in 90 minutes or so. He's going to pay his respects here. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? What do you make of him coming? I think it's a good thing because if he didn't come, he would have caught hell for not coming. But now he's coming, he's going to catch hell. But you know what? We need a little uplift. Can you provide that, do you think? I think so.

Not long after that, I met a man named Ken Williams who also lives in the Dayton area. Did I spell it right? Yes, sir. And what brought you out here today? Why did you want to be out in the Oregon District? Support the community, number one. I was actually supposed to be here Saturday night at Ned Peppers with a couple of other friends, and family came in town from Florida and Detroit, so...

So you weren't there? I wasn't there, luckily. So you're saying you had things gone even a little bit differently. You may have been... I would have definitely been there. Okay. Being out here this morning, obviously the president's landing fairly shortly. Was that part of your decision to come today?

Yes. Yeah. Why? Were you excited he's coming, not excited he's coming? What do you make of it? It's a double-edged sword. One, excited to be able to voice an opinion, if allowed. What would that opinion be? Do something. It's right there on the sign, if allowed. What would that opinion be?

Do something. It's right there on the sign. Do something. What are you going to do? Give us a game plan. Give us a schematic. Give us something. You don't have to give us specifics, but give us something. You said it was a double-edged sword, and I kind of cut you off. You gave me the bad. Was there a good for him coming, or do you see a positive here, or not really? The good would be if he's actually going to do something,

if he's going to talk to these people that are standing out here and they're speaking to live in this community, the people that live around this community. Are you going to listen to what we have to say? Are you going to respond to what we have to say? Are you going to blow us off? Would you welcome the chance to have that conversation? Definitely. Okay.

Three days after the mass shooting, you had people who showed up with pro-Trump signs and anti-Trump signs, not American flags. That wasn't what you saw for this presidential visit. It was very much, what did you think of the president, for many people. And so that really kind of colored the morning. At one point, a police major came up to a group of protesters. What I want to talk about is that the businesses are calling me and they're in tears.

You guys are calling me and they're in tears. You guys are upsetting them. She said that she'd been getting calls from business owners and workers down there, some of whom who really hadn't rested since the shooting happened. A lot of them were here the night of the incident. They haven't had any rest. They're suffering right now. This whole demonstration and counter-demonstration and gathering and all the news cameras was just too much, and it was making it worse.

And the police major's like, you have a right to be here, you have a right to say what you want to say. But out of respect for my community, I'm just asking for a favor. If you guys can just take it down the street, away from this business. Would you think about moving up the few blocks and doing it somewhere just a little bit different, a little bit removed from the rawness of this pain? And pretty much everybody stayed put. So what happens when the president finally arrives? Sure. So he lands in the morning, gets in a motorcade.

He goes to a hospital that treated some of the victims on the night of the shooting. And he meets with the victims there. He meets with a large group of first responders. And he met with some of Ohio's political leaders. And then he got in his motorcade and flew to El Paso. So he did not go to the Oregon district where people like Ken had gone to pay their respects and where they had hoped to see the president at the site of the shooting and to be able to talk to him. He did not. There were people there to protest him if he did. There were people there to cheer him if he came. There were people like Ken who just wanted the chance to talk to him. He didn't go there. The mayor actually said that may have been a wise decision.

It may have been a wise decision. That was one she supported, that judging from the reaction of the vigil on Sunday, people there maybe weren't ready or didn't want to have the president be present there. Mitch, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. After the break, my colleague Natalie Kitchoff on the scene in El Paso. Michael Crowley, you cover the White House and you're in El Paso now. Help us understand what's been happening in the days since the shooting there. Well, what's different in El Paso from what happened in Dayton is that, first of all, more than twice as many people were killed at the Walmart here in El Paso. The other, and I think more politically explosive factor, is that minutes before the shooting here, a manifesto was posted online

that may indicate a motive in the attack. And it is a manifesto that is anti-immigrant and clearly racist. And it also echoes many of the things, and in some cases, the very language that President Trump has used for months and years in his crusade to clamp down on illegal immigration and beef up border security. And in El Paso in particular, there was a real sense that President Trump should not come to the city, that he bears culpability for what happened, and that he was essentially not welcome. President Trump called me yesterday. He was very gracious in the call.

The mayor of El Paso, while saying that he would receive President Trump and basically saying that he had an inherent respect for the office of the mayor of El Paso in an official capacity welcoming the office of the president of the United States, which I consider is my formal duty. So it sounds like things were pretty fraught before Trump even touched down. Extremely fraught. You've been very clear that you believe the president is a racist. Is the president a white supremacist? He is. He's also made that very clear. He's a former congressman from El Paso who is now running for president.

He did several interviews after the shooting in which he explicitly called President Trump a racist. Connect the dots about what he's been doing in this country. He's not tolerating racism. He's promoting racism. He's not tolerating violence. He's inciting racism and violence in this country. And said that Mr. Trump had no business coming to El Paso. And Donald Trump, as he often does, counterattacked on Twitter. The president tweeting O'Rourke has a phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage. Made fun of his name and told him to be quiet. O'Rourke firing back in a tweet of his own saying 22 people in my hometown are

dead after an act of terror inspired by your racism. El Paso will not be quiet and neither will I. So what does it feel like on the ground there? I'm at the scene of Saturday's shooting. The first thing I did this morning was to go to the memorial site where there are dozens of people gathered in the heat, leaving memorials, putting up signs, candles, balloons, tributes to the victims. And I spoke there to a woman named Rosemary Rojas. My age is, I'm a grandmother. That's my age. Who described herself as a political and social activist. I got a call that morning from my granddaughter.

And she had two family members who were at the Walmart at the time of the shooting. She told me that my son and my other granddaughter were in the Walmart and they were able to escape through the tire department. Including the granddaughter, who she said is still quite traumatized and gets startled if she hears a sound like keys dropping on the floor. So President Trump is on his way here. He'll be here in a couple of hours. And I wondered whether you think that's a helpful and useful thing for the president to come visit. For not my president to come here and visit is an insult to the people that have suffered these tremendous oppressive conditions.

horrendous oppressive conditions. Not only is it an insult to us, we see him as him coming to bathe in the glory of this bloodbath that his rhetoric has created. And I'm telling you right now that he is not welcome here. We don't want him here. His words are empty to us. Would you mind by starting out telling me your name, age, and where you're from? My name is Adolfo Tejas. I happen to be chairman of the Republican Party in El Paso County. On the other side, I spoke to a man named Adolfo Tejas. He's a local Republican official, and he is a supporter of President Trump who thinks that it's a good thing that the president is coming here. He believes the president has said the right thing in the wake of the shooting. I thought he had some very good remarks and he talked about it. You know,

it's time for us to come together and heal together. And has no problem with the president coming to try to console and comfort the city. The fact that he's here in El Paso, the fact that he's supporting the people that were hurt, who are a lot of Hispanics, and the fact that he's visiting with law enforcement, because it was a carnage. And for law enforcement to see that, that's going to have an impact on them also, plus the rest of the community. I mean, it's positive that he's here to let us know that we've got the White House here to support us in what we need. And that's a very positive thing. And actually, while I was interviewing Adolfo... Sorry to interrupt you.

It seems like something's kind of bubbling up over there. Do you have any idea why people are arguing? You know, all of a sudden, I started to hear shouting and chanting, and I could see that the crowd had sort of condensed. It looks like a chant has come up, and state troopers arrived, so... And when I went over to see what was happening, I saw that the crowd had gathered around a woman.

I see a woman in a red Make America Great Again hat who is surrounded by TV cameras and seems very upset. People were shouting at this woman. There was profanity. There were exchanges of name-calling. It was getting really tense. And then this guy shows up basically to defend this woman and engage the people who are shouting her down. And he's giving right back at the people who were angry at this woman. And he is shouting right back at them. People now are calling him a white supremacist and he is defiantly right in the middle of this

scrum. The woman actually disappeared from my view and this guy who was quite large and sort of athletic looking was in shouting matches with multiple people before really storming away in anger and I sort of chased him down and caught up with him. Can I get you for two minutes? Can you in shouting matches with multiple people before really storming away in anger. And I sort of chased him down and caught up with him. Can I get you for two minutes? Can you tell me your name, age, and where you're from? Sean Bryan. I'm from here. 48.

And what brought you here today to this site? I've been coming by every morning. I was at the mall when the whole thing went down. I'm a United States Marine or retired Marine. And I've been wanting to just watch it, just take it in, not forget it. So are you finding when you come here, are there a lot of people arguing? You know what? Today's the first time I've seen any of that. Every day I've been here, it's been nice and quiet and peaceful. You know, clearly these guys thought that they could bully that girl and they need to start caring for Americans. I don't care

if you're Democrat, Republican, independent, black, White, Yellow, Polka Dot. I don't give a shit. You're an American, you're an American. We need to all stick together, and we need to all look out for each other. Clearly, people are really on edge. People are really on edge, and it feels like there is simmering tension, and any kind of spark, even one Make America Great Again hat can light the fire. And when Trump arrives in El Paso in the afternoon, what happens? Well, Trump had a pretty low profile arrival here and didn't talk to reporters. He went to the medical center here and he met with some of the survivors and the hospital staff there. Mr. Trump then went on to a police facility, an emergency response center,

where reporters were allowed in. And at that point, he made his first direct comment to the press since before he left the White House this morning. As you know, we left Ohio and the love, the respect for the office of the presidency, it was, I wish you could have been in there to see it. I wish you could have been in there. And what did he say? He claimed that the day had been a big success, that he had been received with a lot of respect in Ohio, and that things had been going very well. We met with numerous people. We met with also the doctors, the nurses, the medical staff. They have done an incredible job, both places, just incredible.

You know, for a moment, it seemed as though he was going to play the kind of traditional apolitical role of a president coming to a, you know, a disaster area or place that had been struck by tragedy. But I had it with Sherrod Brown, he and the mayor, Nan Wally. This is Donald Trump. And although his aides had hoped that he would stay on a pretty tight script today, he began to lash out. I turn on the television and there they are saying, well, I don't know if it was appropriate for the president to be here, you know, et cetera, et cetera, you know, the same old line. They're very dishonest people and that's probably why he got, I think, about zero percent that he failed as a presidential candidate.

We're going to go in and see some very great people. And he attacked Democrats who he felt had been critical of him in Ohio, including Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, also former Vice President Joe Biden, who had given a speech saying that President Trump was sort of fomenting racial hatred around the country. And he accused them of politicking on a day when he said there should not have been politics and took personal shots at them both. So that was not how things were supposed to go here today. But that is Donald Trump in the role of president of the United States. Michael, it seems clear from that meeting with reporters and from your conversations in El Paso that this has not been anything like a traditional presidential visit to a city that has undergone a tragedy.

No, that's absolutely right. You know, a tradition was shaped over generations in which at times of tragedy. over generations in which at times of tragedy... To the people of the community of Littleton, I can only say tonight that the prayers of the American people are with you. An American president would visit communities that were in the midst of collective grief. This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community, and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. And act as a kind of consoler,

try to unite, try to heal. Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. Try to reassure people with the, you know, kind of almost mystical powers of the office and the resources of the federal government. And people would hit pause on politics for a day. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide. Whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. You know, Donald Trump is not interested in those ceremonial functions of the presidency.

He basically never hits pause on his attack politics. So we are in a very different place right now. And one question is whether we can return from it. And at the same time, this problem just keeps getting worse. These mass shootings are coming on the heels of mass shootings. That's right. And it's not clear that we are closer to any kind of substantive action to address it than we were a week ago. President Trump did say this morning that he thought that there might be some action in Congress. He suggested that it could involve stricter background checks for gun sales.

But he said things like that before and not followed through, and not much has happened. But he said things like that before and not followed through and not much has happened. And the Republican agenda to address these shootings is very different from the Democratic one. Democrats think that we need to have sweeping new gun control measures. And Republicans are talking about mental health and even video games and the Internet. It's almost like they're speaking different languages. So it's hard to see any kind of solution on the horizon. And, you know, it's terrible to say, but it just feels like the clock is ticking to the next one of these horrific events.

Michael, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, Puerto Rico's Supreme Court threw its government into new turmoil by ruling that the island's latest governor was unlawfully sworn in. The new governor, Pedro Pierluisi, was the hand-picked successor of former governor Ricardo Rossello, who resigned amid mass protests over leaked text messages in which Rossello mocked his own citizens. The court ruled that Pierluisi

had never been properly confirmed to his last position as Puerto Rico's Secretary of State, making him ineligible to become its governor. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.