The congresswoman from El Paso says that Trump is not welcome because the mayor of Dayton promotes demonstrations
Donald Trump is likely to receive a cool reception when he touches down on Wednesday in El Paso, Texas, three days after a 21-year-old gunman invoking the language of white supremacy killed 22 people and wounded 24 more in a suburban Walmart supermarket there.
The president also faced protests in Dayton, Ohio, the location of the weekend’s second of two mass shootings, where nine were killed by a man who said investigators were exploring violent ideologies on Tuesday.
On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, native of El Paso and former congressman, said the president should stay away, saying flatly that Trump “does not have a place here.”
“He helped build what we saw on Saturday in El Paso,” said O’Rourke, referring to the anti-immigration feeling voiced by the gunman in police custody.
“He has helped to bring about the pain we are currently experiencing. “To cure this society,” he added.
The congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who succeeded O’Rourke in representing the Congressional El Paso region, said Trump was not welcome at El Paso.
Trump, who has not addressed the manifesto of the El Paso suspect directly and deflected calls for enhanced background checks on members of the public purchasing military-style weapons, is expected to visit the El Paso massacre sites on Wednesday and Dayton City in Ohio, where another mass shooting took place just 13 hours after the Texas tragedy, killing nine and injuring dozens.
The Republican mayor, Dee Margo, confirmed Trump’s trip to El Paso, a 683,000-majority Latino town on the U.S.-Mexico frontier, at a news conference on Monday.
In advancing his anti-immigration agenda, Trump used prior trips to El Paso. During the State of the Union lecture this year, the chairman wrongly indicated that, until a border fence was built, the town was “once deemed one of the most hazardous towns in our nation.” This year, there were dueling meetings between Trump and O’Rourke.
But while Margo said he would officially welcome Trump, he advised the chairman not to make further inflammatory remarks about the town.
