White House sends a ho-hum message to haters
It only took four days -- four days! -- but President Donald Trump finally extended his sympathies to victims of the murderous knife attack on a Portland, Ore., light-rail train by an alleged white supremacist.
"The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable," he tweeted Monday morning. "The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them."
If you missed it, that may be because the tweet curiously appeared on the POTUS Twitter account, which has 18 million followers, not the president's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, which has 30.9 million followers.
Pardon me, but I can't help but wonder whether the president would have taken as long with his sentiments or sounded as perfunctory if the murder suspect had been a Muslim. Or an illegal immigrant. Just wondering.
I'll get back to that suspect. First, let's talk about those who deserve to be talked about: the three uncommonly courageous heroes who came to the aid of two teenaged girls who were being bullied and harassed by an alleged white supremacist, police said, for "religiously and racially motivated reasons."
One of the teens is black. The other was wearing a hijab.
Three white men came to their aid, witnesses told police, and the suspect violently attacked all three.
Two of the men died. Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, was a 2016 graduate of Portland's Reed College in economics who worked at a local consulting firm, according to the Portland Oregonian, and had just purchased a house.
Before Namkai-Meche was carried away on a stretcher, an eyewitness told the Oregonian, he had a last message: "Tell everyone on this train I love them."
The second fatality was Ricky John Best, 53, a retired U.S. Army platoon sergeant and father of four who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and worked as a technician for the city's government. A Republican, according to news accounts, he ran in the non-partisan Clackamas County commissioner's race and refused to take campaign contributions -- a gesture that some locals in my experience would call is a "very Portland thing" to do.
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