It’s not just Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates urging Donald Trump to keep out of El Paso after a white supremacist terrorist murdered 22 innocent people at a Walmart.
As Congresswoman Veronica Escobar said on Tuesday, the victims themselves are urging the president to stay away and let the city heal after he put a target on their backs via his racist rhetoric.
“The other thing that I heard … totally unsolicited from victims still in the hospital as they grabbed my arm and tell me, ‘Tell him not to come here,'” the Texas lawmaker said.
She added, “Words are powerful, and words have consequences. And the words he’s used to dehumanize us, to dehumanize communities like mine, to dehumanize immigrants, they have a consequence, and they provide fuel for people who already are bigoted. ”
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El Paso Rep. Veronica Escobar says shooting victims are urging her to tell Trump to stay away. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/WqDHl6QuGD
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) August 7, 2019
Rep. Escobar said:
This community is full of hope and resilience and beauty. But the other thing that I heard, Chris, totally unsolicited from victims still in the hospital as they grabbed my arm and tell me, ‘Tell him not to come here.’ … I just talked to another gentleman, Ralph, a veteran, a Vietnam veteran who stopped me and he said, ‘I am being made to feel like I’m not American.’ And he feels that under this president. So as I said via Twitter and I said before, words are powerful, and words have consequences. And the words he’s used to dehumanize us, to dehumanize communities like mine, to dehumanize immigrants, they have a consequence, and they provide fuel for people who already are bigoted. And when they have a president who is racist and whips people up into a frenzy at rallies, and when people yell ‘We’ll shoot them’ and he doesn’t stop to think, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing?’ There’s such a moral crisis.
If the president had compassion, he’d stay out of El Paso
If Donald Trump had an ounce of compassion for the people of El Paso, he would stay away from their city and let them recover.
But that’s the thing about this president: He doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body. His only concern about the massacre in El Paso – and any type of tragedy that strikes the United States – is how it will impact him politically.
Donald Trump has spent years spewing racist rhetoric that emboldens people on the fringes to do exactly what the El Paso gunman did over the weekend. Now he wants to drop into the border city and act like he gives a damn about their pain – pain that he helped create.
The people of El Paso – particularly the families of those who were killed and those who continue to lie in hospital beds at this hour – can see right through it.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
