While Dallas police officers were responding to a shootout that killed five of their own, a Donald Trump surrogate in Virginia wasted no time in politicizing the event for his candidate’s benefit.
Advertisement
The comment put the Trump campaign in the unusual position of authorizing its Virginia vice chairman to disavow a comment by the state chairman.
The nation must heal and address the issues raised by the tragic events, she said, and that can begin by listening to one another.
The attack by a black gunman targeting white police officers occurred as marchers in Dallas were protesting separate shooting deaths of two black men by police earlier this week, which appeared similar to shootings that spawned the Black Lives Matter movement.
Clinton on Friday scratched a planned rally in Scranton, Pa., with Vice President Joe Biden and tweeted that she mourned for the officers “shot while doing their sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters”. On Wednesday, Philando Castile was fatally shot in a vehicle by a Minnesota officer, with the aftermath livestreamed on Facebook by his girlfriend.
“This morning, I offer my thoughts and prayers for all of the victims’ families, and we pray for our courageous police officers and 1st-responders who risk their lives to protect us every single day”, Donald Trump said.
“It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this”.
Update: The Herald also reports that Trump, bastion of all things tolerance, has invited “20-30 “Hispanic leaders” to lunch at Versailles, Miami’s capital of Cuban political drama, tomorrow before his speech at the DoubleTree.
Hundreds of people gathered in Dallas to protest the killings Thursday night when Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire, killing five police officers and injuring seven others.
Despite his doubling down on the tweet, which showed Clinton against a background of stacked cash with a six-pointed star reading “most corrupt candidate ever”, that swift disavowal could be the first sign that Trump’s campaign is concerned about going too far.
Trump also made his first mention of the two black men killed by police this week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota.
President Barack Obama, overseas in Poland for a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit, said, “anyone involved in the senseless murders will be held fully accountable”. “A brutal attack on our police force is an attack on our country and an attack on our families”.
Advertisement
Newt Gingrich says that he thinks Donald Trump is a “necessary candidate” amid global anti-establishment sentiment, but that he wouldn’t automatically say yes to an eventual proposal to become Trump’s… “We will pull through these tragedies”, he said.
