Here's Trump Using a Baby Whose Parents Died Shielding Him in the El Paso Shooting as a Photo Op

President Donald Trump’s visit with the survivors and first responders of the El Paso, TX, shooting might have gone to shit, but at least he has this extremely inappropriate photo op with a baby who survived the massacre to show for it.

Amid all the hospital patients who survived the shooting that killed 22 people who didn’t want to be visited by the president, two patients who had been discharged were brought back to the University Medical Center of El Paso. One of them was a two month old baby whose parents, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, died while shielding their son and each other from the gunfire, NPR reported.

According to CNN’s Jim Acosta, the baby had been hospitalized but was brought back after being discharged for Trump’s visit. Citing a hospital official, CNN also reported Trump showed “an absence of empathy” during the visit, and that he made other comments that left staffers thinking Trump wasn’t focused enough on consoling survivors and hospital staff.

Trump even got a photo with the baby, which was posted on Melania Trump’s Twitter account. In the photo, to the left of Trump, appears to be Tito Anchondo, the brother of Andre Anchondo, who told NPR he wanted to take the child in and felt a responsibility to look after him.

Tito Anchondo also told NPR that his family members, Andre included, are lifelong Republican conservatives, and that he wanted to meet with Trump to see if he had “maybe some kind of remorse for statements that he’s made,” presumably the comments about immigrant “invasions” that the El Paso shooter echoed in his white supremacist manifesto.

Looking at this photo of Trump’s flashing grin and thumbs up, and the other terribly inappropriate things he did during his visit, I can’t imagine anyone who met him that day would have described his behavior as “remorseful.”

 
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