Mere hours after a deadly mass shooting at a Pennsylvania synagogue, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday night to talk about baseball.
The president, who’d apparently tuned in to watch Game 4 of the World Series, called out Los Angeles Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts in his late night posting. The Dodgers lost the game to the Boston Red Sox, 9-6, after having a 4-0 lead, and Trump questioned Roberts’ managerial moves.
Some supporters said Trump — who has a history of tweeting about sports — saw nothing wrong with Trump commenting on the World Series despite the tragedy earlier in the day ― a shooting that stands as one of the most lethal attacks targeting the Jewish community in U.S. history.
But many Twitter users accused the president of insensitivity, given that a gunman had killed at least 11 people and wounded six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“As a guy living in Pittsburgh, let me just ask: is watching the World Series really the best use of your time this evening?” one Twitter user responded to Trump.
The president’s hometown newspaper, the New York Daily News, also chastised the baseball tweet.
“Trump felt the need to weigh in on the World Series on a day when the president should have had much more pressing issues to attend to,” the paper’s sports staff wrote in an editorial.
Here are some of the other comments:
As for Roberts, he pushed back against Trump’s criticism, saying that while he was happy the president had tuned in to watch the game, his remarks were but “one man’s opinion.”
Trump has repeatedly come under scrutiny in recent days for his responses to news events.
On Friday, the same day a man was arrested in connection with bombs sent to several prominent Democrats and Trump critics, the president was criticized for bashing the media and “Crooked Hillary Clinton” at a North Carolina rally.
His remarks prompted the crowd to chant “CNN sucks!” and “lock her up!” Both CNN and Clinton were targets of the bomb mailings last week.
The president was also lambasted for joking about wanting to cancel two public engagements on Saturday — not because of the mass shooting but out of vanity.
“I said, ‘Maybe I should cancel this arrangement because I have a bad hair day,’” Trump said at the Future Farmers of America Convention in Indianapolis, where he appeared after the shooting. “And the bad news ― somebody said, ‘Actually it looks better than it usually does.’”
Trump was also roundly mocked on social media for his suggestion that an armed guard could’ve “stopped” the synagogue shooter, who officials said wielded an assault-style rifle in his rampage.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Trump addressed the Future Farmers of America Convention in Washington. The locale was Indianapolis.