Trump's Visit To Pittsburgh — A City That Didn't Want Him

PITTSBURGH — On Tuesday evening, Tracy Baton stood on the steps of the Sixth Presbyterian Church — the same church where Mr. Rogers worshipped for many years — and spoke to a crowd of thousands.

“When Mr. Rogers came to Pittsburgh in the ’50s, he found a neighborhood full of values, full of Jewish values, and he took them forward and shared them with the world,” she said as the sun set over Squirrel Hill, the place she was raised. “Pittsburgh values matter everywhere now.”

Those who “would insert themselves on a national stage, into a city in mourning, before the dead are buried, is unacceptable,” she continued. “Those that would limit our neighbors’ vote, that would foment hate against the Jewish community, Muslim community, people of color, LGBTQ people, as well as wage a war on women’s bodies, are not welcome here!”

The crowd cheered on Baton, director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Women’s March on Washington. They all knew whom she was referring to: About an hour earlier and only a few blocks away, President Donald Trump’s motorcade had left the synagogue where a white supremacist slaughtered 11 people Saturday. It was part of Trump’s three-hour photo-op in a grieving city where most of the residents, it seemed, had never wanted him to come at all.

Mayor Bill Peduto (D) implored the president not to come until after the victims’ funerals were complete, saying “all attention [Tuesday] should be on the victims.”

But the president came here anyway, to a city reeling from white nationalist violence, and he did so just hours after it emerged that he is considering using an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., a white nationalist proposal.

When he arrived at Tree of Life synagogue, he and first lady Melania Trump talked with one of the temple’s three rabbis, Jeffrey Myers, one of the few people who had agreed to meet the president. The Trumps laid flowers on 11 makeshift Star of David memorials erected outside the building, each honoring a different victim. Trump had, in essence, already blamed the synagogue for their deaths, arguing just a few hours after the shooting that worshippers would have been protected if the synagogue had armed security guards.

“We have people who can’t sit shiva because you’re blocking our streets!” the Rev. Susan Rothenberg, a Presbyterian minister who lives a few doors down from the synagogue, screamed at the president when he arrived. “These people can’t grieve! You’re causing them pain!”