US President Donald Trump described mass shootings in Texas and Ohio as a 'crime against all of humanity'. PHOTO: AFP
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Monday told a nation mourning the death of 31 people in two weekend mass shootings that he rejected racism and white supremacist ideology, moving to blunt criticism that his anti-immigrant rhetoric fuels violence.
As flags flew at half-mast at the White House and across the country and the death toll edged up by two, Trump made an unusually direct condemnation of racists as he took on the role of consoler in chief.
But as the country tried to digest weekend shootings that left 22 dead at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas and another nine outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio, Trump offered little in the way of new ideas for a country awash with guns and painfully accustomed to mass shootings.
"Our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy," Trump said.
He stressed that mental illness was the main culprit fueling mass shootings in America, as opposed to the ready availability of firearms or extremist thinking, as argued by gun control advocates.
At the sites of America's latest massacres -- numbers 250 and 251 so far this year -- people came to honor the dead.
Makeshift memorials with candles, flowers, heart-shaped balloons and posters with messages of condolence sprang up outside the Walmart in Texas and the Dayton bar.
Double shootings heighten fears of 'white terrorism' in US
"You are loved," read an inscription on a small yellow cardboard heart placed outside the Ned Peppers Bar.
Outside the Walmart store that was attacked Saturday, people paused to pay their respects at the memorial. Balloons shaped like stars -- Texas is the Lone Star State -- fluttered in the morning breeze.
One poster read: "A date never to forget: August 3, 2019."
In his brief address, Trump made no mention of two ideas he had tweeted hours earlier: tightening background checks for gun buyers and linking gun control reform to changes in immigration law.
The president did say he supported "red flag" laws allowing authorities to confiscate weapons from people believed to present grave risks.
On Saturday, Trump described the El Paso attack as ‘an act of cowardice’ on Twitter.
Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2019
But critics said the president's habit of speaking in derogatory terms about immigrants is pushing hatred of foreigners into the political mainstream and encouraging white supremacism.
"To pretend that his administration and the hateful rhetoric it spreads doesn't play a role in the kind of violence that we saw yesterday in El Paso is ignorant at best and irresponsible at worst," said the Southern Poverty Law Center, a major civil rights group.
It cited Trump actions like calling Mexican migrants rapists and drug dealers and doing nothing when a crowd at a Trump rally chanted 'send her back' in reference to a Somali-born congresswoman.
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