Donald Trump’s campaign disavowed Facebook comments from its Virginia chairman, Corey Stewart, in which he said liberal politicians, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, encourage the murder of police officers.
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Clinton canceled a planned campaign appearance Friday with Vice President Biden in Scranton, Pa., following the Dallas shootings.
Trump canceled a speech in Miami on Hispanic issues.
In a lengthy statement, Trump denounced the “execution-style shootings” as “a coordinated, premeditate assault on the men and women who keep us safe”.
“I mourn for the officers shot while doing their sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters, for their families and all who serve with them”, Clinton wrote on Twitter. Their deaths prompted the protest in Dallas interrupted by the shootings that killed five police officers.
“Something is profoundly wrong when so many Americans have reason to believe that our country doesn’t consider them as precious as others because of the color of their skin”, she said Thursday on Twitter, before the Dallas shootings.
Trump’s statement on the Dallas attack appeared to have been crafted with the help of professional campaign staff, demonstrating Trump’s willingness to rely on his still-small but growing communications team. “I don’t think we know the answer to that, Wolf”, she said. “This morning I offer my thoughts and prayers for all of the victims’ families, and we pray for our fearless police officers and first responders who risk their lives to protect us every single day”. But she also said it was important to acknowledge the “implicit bias” in society and some police departments and, in particular, called on white Americans to empathize with African-Americans.
“We’re seeing wild acts of gun violence and we are polarized in our politics and in the public square”, said historian Douglas Brinkley.
“We’ve got to do much more to listen to one another, to respect each other”, including supporting both law enforcement and Americans “who have deadly encounters with the police”, she said on CNN.
Reflecting on the fatal shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas this week, Hillary Clinton called for a “just accounting” of each case and implored Americans to strive “to walk in one another’s shoes” and reach for common ground.
President Obama spoke about the events from Poland early Friday morning, but later in the day announced that he would return to Washington, D.C., on Sunday night.
Trump’s national campaign condemned Stewart’s post, which has since been deleted, in a statement to The New York Times. It was the deadliest attack for the country’s law enforcement since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
He said the deaths of the two men in Louisiana and Minnesota, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, reveal “how much more work we have to do to make every American feel that their safety is protected” and that the country’s “racial division [has] gotten worse not better”.
Hillary Clinton tweeted her condolences following the shooting.
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“I think sometimes for whites it’s hard to appreciate how real that is and how it’s an everyday danger”, Gingrich said. He said he met with Dallas police officers several weeks ago, and that they were on his mind Friday. The following day, Philando Castile was fatally shot in a vehicle by a Minnesota officer, with the aftermath livestreamed on Facebook by his girlfriend. “He was just getting his license and registration, sir”, Reynolds says to the police officer in the video.
