Some small comfort can be taken, we suppose, from the leaders and residents of a city that’s suffered a major tragedy being able to get back to somewhat normal after the event, making jokes where normally you might see their pain instead.
That’s exactly where Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio is right now, after a woman-hating mass shooter in her city gunned down 9 and injured 27 others in an attack on the Oregon District of downtown Dayton in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
The shooting, the third attack with an assault weapon in the US in the span of a week, claimed the life of the gunman’s sister, and details were so long in coming out that it was hard to process the grief of the tragedy on any kind of normal timeline.
That wasn’t any excuse, however, for President Trump’s major gaffe as he addressed the nation today, less than 36 hours after the attack, calling Dayton “Toledo” instead — a city 150 miles from where the attack took place.
We get that Trump visits a lot of cities on his now 4-year-long rally tour, which was essentially uninterrupted by his inauguration. But getting the name wrong of a city that’s just been through what Dayton has been through is unacceptable.
The Mayor, however, took it rather in stride. The fact that Trump’s “normal” tweets — non-shooting-related — resumed almost immediately after he finally deigned to mention the tragedies America has seen in the last week, prove that the President doesn’t care or even pay attention that much to events like this. But Mayor Whaley knows that Trump could end up in her town anyway, making himself look presidential and claiming credit for things he hasn’t done and will never do.
A reporter asked the Mayor if she’d gotten any calls from the White House about a possible visit from the commander in chief, and she wasn’t quite sure what the situation was:
He didn’t tell, he said sometime this week, I mean, I’ve heard that he’s coming Wednesday, but I have not gotten a call.”
Mayor of Dayton Nan Whaley: “I’ve heard that [President Trump’s] coming Wednesday but I have not gotten a call. And you know he might be going to Toledo, I don’t know.” pic.twitter.com/CYnyF6hA31
— The Hill (@thehill) August 5, 2019
Thank goodness Dayton has a mayor that can keep her wit about her in times like this.
Featured image via screen capture
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