If you suspected that Trump’s only reason for visiting Parkland school shooting victims was that he was already planning to golf at Mar-a-Lago anyway and it wasn’t too far out of his way, you were right.
While initial reports indicated that President Stable Genius only spent six minutes meeting with victims, it turns out we’re not giving him enough credit. He was actually in the building for a whole 40 minutes before he hopped in his limo and headed back to his resort.
I deleted this tweet because, although it wasn’t in this pool report, Trump arrived at hospital at 6:32. So he was there for about 40 minutes. pic.twitter.com/jhbd8R3v7K
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2018
Palm Beach Post political reporter George Bennett says that The Donald spent just over 30 minutes with shooting victims — not all of them, though. He visited exactly two victims. Let’s compare that to what President Obama did “in secret” after Newtown:
Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son. . . . Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter. For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.
And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss. After each classroom, we would go back into those fluorescent hallways and walk through the names of the coming families, and then the president would dive back in, like a soldier returning to a tour of duty in a worthy but wearing war. We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer.
The staff did the preparation work, but the comfort and healing were all on President Obama. I remember worrying about the toll it was taking on him. And of course, even a president’s comfort was woefully inadequate for these families in the face of this particularly unspeakable loss. But it became some small measure of love, on a weekend when evil reigned.
But Trump can never be a fraction of the man President Obama is, so he stick around for long enough to feel like he did something, posed for a photo with some hospital staff (with a big cheesy grin on his face while giving a thumbs up) and got the hell out of there.
Less than 48 hours after 17 people were murdered at a high school in Parkland, Florida, Donald Trump pays a visit to a local hospital and is thumbs up and all smiles. MAGA! pic.twitter.com/jUs0JnfNB4
— Perez (@ThePerezHilton) February 17, 2018
Though President Obama didn’t advertise the time he spent with shooting victims, Trump made sure that photographers were present for the couple he did bother to visit:
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Madeline “Maddy” Wilford, 18, and her family, who is recovering from gunshot wounds at Broward Health North Medical Center in Deerfield Beach, Florida. #StonemanShooting pic.twitter.com/v2SPVRG1No
— Dan Scavino Jr. (@Scavino45) February 17, 2018
Asked by reporters if our nation’s gun laws need to be changed to prevent another tragedy like this, Trump refused to respond and “walked into another room.”
While our last President treated shootings like they were a serious problem and genuinely cared about the victims, this was just another campaign stop to Trump.
Image via Twitter