Donald Trump’s tweets offer a window into his mind; they tell us, in real time, what occupies his consciousness (at least between the hours of 5 and 9 a.m., generally). But often more revealing than what the president does tweet is what he doesn’t tweet.
As of this writing, President Trump has issued seven tweets about the London Bridge terror attack. That’s fine—justified even. It was a disgusting, vicious act of violence on innocents. The dead and injured were guilty of nothing more than congregating in public spaces on a warm evening and enjoying each other’s company. It’s encouraging that, unlike his famously aloof—or as his apologists would have it, “Spock-like”—predecessor, President Trump appears viscerally upset by jihadist terrorism.
Which makes it all the more puzzling and upsetting that the president appears untroubled by the events that transpired in Portland, Oregon, ten days ago. To recap: Two Fridays ago, a white supremacist boarded a commuter train in the Pacific Northwestern city and began verbally harassing two young women, one of whom was wearing a hijab. Three men intervened and formed a barrier between the bigot and his targets. He threatened the men in response, saying he would kill them. And in the end, he made good on his threats: He stabbed all three. Two—one, a recent Reed College graduate, only 23 years old, and the other, an Iraq war veteran and father of four—died. The third suffered grievous injuries.
Yet this atrocity appears not to have disturbed the consciousness of the president. It was only after a weekend of clamor that Trump’s official @POTUS account—not the president’s personal account, from which he speaks unfiltered—issued an anodyne statement on Memorial Day, calling the murder of these two unbelievably courageous men “unacceptable.” It’s as if he were admonishing an elementary school kid for eating a cookie before he’s had his dinner.
Another president might have visited the survivor in the hospital. Another president might have attended the funerals of those who were murdered—or at least sent a representative to pay his respects. But not this president. Indeed, most people would have recognized the heroism of the Portland men, and paid tribute to it.
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump pledged to elevate the importance of Americans in political life: Unlike his “globalist” opponents, Trump pledged to put “America First.” Another way to think about “America First” is “Americans First.” How strange, then, that the savage murder of two American heroes was quite obviously not at the top of his mind.
