{UAH} Shooting victim’s family shuns President Trump in Pittsburgh as top officials decline to join him

National

Shooting victim's family shuns President Trump in Pittsburgh as top officials decline to join him

'Love is going to win': Squirrel Hill residents react to shooting

Squirrel Hill residents talk about their neighborhood in the wake of the fatal shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27. (Elyse Samuels, Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

By Moriah Balingit ,

Avi Selk and

Mark Berman

October 30 at 1:52 PM

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."

Stein's funeral was one of four scheduled for Tuesday. In the late morning, hundreds of mourners lined up to see the coffins of Cecil and David Rosenthal — two brothers gunned down at Tree of Life three days earlier, as they celebrated the Jewish Sabbath with Stein and the other victims.

The city's Democratic mayor, Bill Peduto, had asked the White House to consider "the will of the families" before visiting — as well as the resources of a city straining under the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

"All attention should be on the victims," Peduto said Monday. "We do not have enough public safety officials to provide enough protection at the funerals and ... at the same time draw attention to a potential presidential visit."

After Trump confirmed his visit anyway, the mayor's office said Peduto would not appear with the president. Neither will Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers — who called out "hate" in U.S. political speech after the shooting — has said he plans to welcome the president. "Hate is not political," he told The Washington Post. "It is not blue or red, it's not male or female, it doesn't know any of those divisions."

['I'm Dr. Cohen': The powerful humanity of the Jewish hospital staff that treated Robert Bowers]

Trump has not announced whether he will visit Squirrel Hill — the predominantly Jewish neighborhood where the synagogue is located and many victims lived. Tree of Life has been closed since Saturday's rampage, which was allegedly carried out by a man who had ranted online that Jews were bringing "invaders in that kill our people."

The suspect, Robert Bowers, was referring to a Jewish group that works with refugees in the United States. Trump has repeatedly referred to migrants as dangerous invaders, and did so again in a tweet on Monday. The president has also repeatedly denigrated "globalists" despite warnings from Jewish groups that the word is code for Jews in anti-Semitic circles, and appeared in one of Bowers's online rants.

Trump's supporters, however, paint him as a friend to Jews, pointing out his Jewish daughter and son-in-law, his support for the Israeli government, and his strong condemnations of "evil" anti-Semitism on Saturday.

"I'm just going to pay my respects," Trump said in a Fox News interview Monday evening. "I'm also going to the hospital to see the officers and some of the people that were so badly hurt. So, and I really look forward to going. I would have done it even sooner, but I didn't want to disrupt anymore than they already had disruption."

Funerals are scheduled to run at least through Friday.

[Trump played 'Happy' at an event after the Pittsburgh massacre. Now Pharrell wants to sue him.]

More than 70,000 people have signed an open letterpublished by a progressive Jewish organization in Pittsburgh, saying Trump is not welcome in the city until he denounces white nationalism and stops "targeting" minorities in his rhetoric and policies. "For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement," the letter reads.

Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor who led the Anti-Defamation League for nearly 30 years, made the same argument to reach the opposite conclusion from the letter signers.

"I want him to come to Pittsburgh," the former ADL director told the Times of Israel. "I want him to go to the funerals. I want him to see the pain of what he didn't do but his words helped create."

Foxman did not think Trump was an anti-Semite, but said the president's language gives bigots legitimacy and a certain kind of boldness. "For Bowers, who all his life fantasized about getting the Jews because the Jews were everywhere, immigration was it," he said.

Trump also has been criticized for repeatedly suggesting that arming more people will stop mass shootings. He made the same suggestion after the attack on the synagogue, even though the gunman shot three police officers before he was captured, and armed officers have been present at multiple rampages in recent years.

The White House woke up to yet another furor on Tuesday morning. Video was spreading virally from a Michigan rally the previous evening, in which Vice President Pence prayed for the synagogue's victims with the leader of a "Messianic synagogue" that urges Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah — a movement condemned by Jewish leaders as Christian evangelism in disguise.

A Pence aide told The Post that Rabbi Loren Jacobs was invited to the event by a Republican congressional candidate, and said the vice president did not know who the Messianic rabbi was when he called him onstage "to deliver a message of unity. "

[Honoring Pittsburgh synagogue victims, Mike Pence appears with 'rabbi' who preaches, 'Jesus is the Messiah']

A 46-year-old truck driver who gave his neighbors no hintof the bigotry he spewed online, Bowers arrived in federal court Monday in a wheelchair, still recovering from injuries he suffered in a shootout with police at the synagogue.

All throughout his rampage, his capture, and his care in the emergency room at Allegheny General Hospital, where some of the doctors and nurses who treated him were Jewish, Bowers allegedly ranted about wanting to kill Jews.

But he said almost nothing from his wheelchair in the courthouse. Magistrate Judge Robert C. Mitchell read the charges, including obstruction of exercise of religious belief resulting in death, for which he might face the death penalty. Dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, he was asked if he wanted a public defender because he could not afford an attorney, and said "yes."

He was ordered to be held without bail.

This courtroom sketch depicts Robert Gregory Bowers, who was wounded in a gun battle with police, as he appeared in a wheelchair in federal court on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, in Pittsburgh to face charges he killed 11 people. (Dave Klug via AP)

Trump's supporters have pointed out that Bowers, according to his online posts, did not vote for the president or support his "Make America Great Again" movement. ("There is no #MAGA as long is there is a [Jew] infestation," Bowers wrote two days before the massacre.)

But Jewish groups have been warning about Trump's rhetoric since his presidential campaign, when he ranted about "blood suckers" and an unfair "global power structure," — echoing ancient anti-Semitic tropes. Trump once released a campaign ad that warned against "those who control the levers of power," pairing the narration with images of prominent Jews, including the liberal financier George Soros.

Soros was the first target of a mail bomb campaign this month, aimed at the same prominent liberals Trump regularly attacks. As FBI agents hunted for a suspect last week, Trump attacked "globalists" in yet another speech, then laughed as his crowd chanted Soros's name and chanted, "lock him up." A fervent Trump supporter was later arrested and charged with the sending the bombs.

White House officials said they had to convince the president to visit Pittsburgh. They said the president, who has four rallies scheduled this week, is clamoring to get back on the campaign trail.

Selk and Berman reported from Washington. Kayla Epstein and Tim Craig contributed reporting from Pittsburgh. Gabriel Pogrund, Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey, Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed from Washington.

Read more:

'Fox & Friends' scolds Trump over ongoing 'enemy of the people' crusade

The lives lost in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

Muslim community raises money for victims of Tree of Life shooting

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