U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh Tuesday to pay homage to the 11 people slain in the worst instance of anti-Semitic violence in American history. As the Trumps placed their tributes outside the synagogue, protesters nearby shouted that the president was not welcome.
The scene reflected the increasingly divided nation Trump leads, one gripped by a week of political violence and hate and hurtling toward contentious midterm elections that could alter the path of the presidency.
On their arrival, the Trumps entered the vestibule of the synagogue, where they lit candles for each of the victims before stepping outside. Shouts of "Words matter!" and "Trump, go home!" could be heard from demonstrators gathered not far from where the gunman opened fire on Saturday.
The Trumps were greeted by Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who led them inside. After lighting the candles, the couple emerged about 20 minutes later and walked to a memorial for the victims outside the building.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who had been conducting services when the shooting began, gestured at the row of white Stars of David, one for each person killed. Trump placed a stone on each, a Jewish mourning tradition, while the first lady added a flower. They were joined by the president's Jewish daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both White House advisers, and by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is also Jewish.
Trump left in his motorcade after about 30 minutes at the synagogue, without making any public remarks.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders described the visit as "very humbling and sad" for the president.
She said Trump did not speak publicly during his visit to denounce anti-Semitism because he has spoken about it before.
"He wanted today to be about showing respect for the families and the friends of the victims as well as for Jewish Americans," Sanders said.
Near the synagogue, flowers, candles and chalk drawings filled the corner, including a small rock painted with the number "6,000,011," adding the victims this week to the estimated number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The Trumps later spent more than an hour at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where some of the injured victims are recovering. The couple's motorcade passed several hundred protesters on the street and a sign that said, "It's your fault."
Inside the hospital, Trump visited three police officers wounded in the gunfight with the shooting suspect, and their families. He also spent an hour with the widow of victim Dr. Richard Gottfried, Sanders said.
The widow "said she wanted to meet the president to let him know that they wanted him there," Sanders said.
The first funerals for the victims were held earlier on Tuesday.
The accused gunman, Robert Bowers, 46, was charged on Monday with 29 federal felony counts, including hate crimes, and if convicted could face the death penalty.
The attack has heightened a national debate over Trump's rhetoric, which critics say has contributed to a surge in white nationalist and neo-Nazi activity. The Trump administration has rejected the notion that Trump has encouraged the far-right extremists who have embraced him.
But protest organizers said Trump's frequent tweets about caravans of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to the United States may have been a factor in provoking Saturday's bloodshed. They said Trump had characterized the caravans as an "invasion" and claimed they harbored terrorists and were financed in part by Democrats and Jewish Democratic mega-donor George Soros.
In a social media post on Saturday, Bowers referred to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish refugee aid organization, as helping to "bring invaders in that kill our people," declaring: "I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."
In a statement announcing their rally, protest organizers said the gunman "believed anti-Semitic lies that Jews were funding the caravan."
The announcement echoed an open letter to Trump from a group of local progressive Jews, who wrote: "You are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism."
More than 78,000 people have signed the letter, organized and posted online by the Pittsburgh chapter of Bend the Arc, which says it is opposed to what it calls "the immoral agenda of the Trump administration and the Republican Party."
Squirrel Hill resident Paul Carberry said Trump should not have visited until the dead were buried.
"He didn't pull the trigger, but his verbiage and actions don't help," Carberry said.
But Shayna Marcus, a nurse who rushed to the synagogue on Saturday to help the wounded, and whose four kippah-wearing boys carried signs in support of the president, said she felt Trump was taking an unfair portion of the blame.
"I don't think focusing on Trump is the answer, or on politics," Marcus said.
In Washington, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters, "If people are there to protest, that's their right. For the president, it was not a moment for politics."
When Air Force One touched down at the airport outside Pittsburgh, the Trumps were not greeted by the usual phalanx of local officials that usually welcomes a visiting president, a reflection of the controversy surrounding the visit.
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, told reporters before the visit was announced that the White House should consult with the families of the victims about their preferences and asked that the president not come during a funeral. Neither he nor Democratic Governor Tom Wolf appeared with Trump.
Beth Melena, a campaign spokeswoman for Wolf, said the governor based his decision to stay away on input from the victims' families, who told him they did not want the president there on the day their loved ones were being buried.
As Trump's motorcade wound through downtown Pittsburgh, some onlookers raised their middle fingers at the president while others showed downturned thumbs.
The White House had invited the top four congressional leaders to join Trump, but none did.
A spokesman for Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had scheduled events in his home state of Kentucky, pushing back on the suggestion that he declined. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan's office said he could not attend on short notice. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also opted not to participate.
Trump's visit to Pennsylvania's second-largest city came just seven days before the national midterm elections that will determine whether his Republican Party will maintain control of both houses of Congress or whether the Democrats will seize a majority in one chamber or both.
