Donald Trump Mistakenly Says Shooting Happened In Toledo, Not Dayton, Ohio
Donald Trump made a speech on Monday condemning the two mass shootings that took place over the weekend. While calling for blessings on the people who died in the massacres, the president mistakenly said the violence occurred in Toledo, Ohio, rather than Dayton, Ohio.
According to USA Today, the slip up came at the end of a 10-minute speech delivered by the president in which he condemned the attacks in Dayton and El Paso, Texas, which happened within hours of each other over the weekend.
“If we are able to pass great legislation after all of these years, we will ensure that those who were attacked will not have died in vain. May God bless the memory of those who died in Toledo. May God protect them,” he said.
The violence started in a Walmart in El Paso when a gunman opened fire, killing 20 and wounding over 26 more. The alleged shooter reportedly wrote a white supremacist language-tinged manifesto filled with anti-immigrant and racist statements prior to staging the attack. Allegedly, the writer used language such as “invasion” to describe immigrants coming to the United States, a term that critics point out the president has also used in the past.
Less than a day later, an unrelated gunman opened fire at an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people and injuring dozens more. The man reportedly had a history of making violent threats. Police are not sure about the motivation of the alleged killer. He was wearing body armor and carrying multiple extra magazines with him when he opened fire. Reports say that he killed nearly 10 people in just 30 seconds. Police arrived on the scene in less than a minute. The man was shot and killed by law enforcement.
The alleged shooter had reportedly just graduated from college and had a job offer in hand.
Donald Trump cares so little about mass shootings that he says it happened in the wrong city ("Toledo").
What's worse, he seemingly read it off the teleprompter, meaning the entire White House didn't care enough to get it right, either.pic.twitter.com/OKLVs6nj5V
— VoteVets (@votevets) August 5, 2019
During his speech, Trump called for the nation to condemn bigotry and racism and addressed the alleged El Paso shooter’s manifesto, saying that it was filled with “racist hate,” according to CNBC. Trump said that Americans are “outraged and sickened by this monstrous evil, the cruelty, the hatred, the malice, the bloodshed and the terror.”
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racist bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated,” he then added. “Hate has no place in America.”
Earlier, Trump had also called for background checks for gun sales and backed so-called red flag laws.
President Donald Trump calls on U.S. lawmakers to pass gun background check law https://t.co/MKANFbIQRT pic.twitter.com/OegpAhMRWL
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 5, 2019
