Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: Tree of Life funerals begin as President Trump plans Squirrel Hill visit

PITTSBURGH — President Trump plans to visit this city Tuesday despite pleas from the mayor and some Jewish leaders that he stay away — and accusations that he and his administration have fueled anti-Semitism through their rhetoric, both before and after Saturday’s mbadacre inside a synagogue.

The president and first lady Melania Trump are scheduled to arrive here in the late afternoon, several hours after the first funerals are held for the 11 victims of the mbad shooting at Tree of Life synagogue. More than 1,000 people have so far signed up for a demonstration at the same time — declaring Trump “unwelcome in our city and in our country.”

At least one of the victims’ families has turned the president away.

Trump offered to visit with the family of Daniel Stein, a 71-year-old who had just become a grandfather when he was gunned down at Tree of Life. Stein’s nephew, Stephen Halle, said the family declined. It was in part because of the comments Trump made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when he suggested the synagogue should have had an armed guard.

“Everybody feels that they were inappropriate,” Halle said Tuesday — the same day his uncle was set to be buried — of Trump’s remarks about security. “He was blaming the community.

“A church, a synagogue, should not be a fortress. It should be an open welcoming place to feel safe.”

Trump has not announced whether he will visit Squirrel Hill — the predominantly Jewish neighborhood where the synagogue is located and many victims lives. Tree of Life has been closed since Saturday’s rampage, which was allegedly carried out by a man who had ranted online that Jews were bringing “invaders in that kill our people.”

The suspect, Robert Bowers, was referring to a Jewish group that worked with refugees in the United States. Trump has repeatedly referred to migrants as dangerous invaders, and did so again in a tweet on Monday. The president has also repeatedly denigrated “globalists” despite warnings from Jewish groups that the word is code for Jews in anti-Semitic circles, and appeared in one of Bowers’ online rants.

Trump’s supporters, however, paint him as a friend to Jews, pointing out his support for the Israeli government and his strong condemnations of “evil” anti-Semitism on Saturday.

“I’m just going to pay my respects,” Trump said in a Fox News interview Monday evening. “I’m also going to the hospital to see the officers and some of the people that were so badly hurt. So, and I really look forward to going. I would have done it even sooner, but I didn’t want to disrupt anymore than they already had disruption.”

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Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who has called out “hate” in U.S. political speech since some of his congregants were gunned down, nevertheless planned to welcome the president. The accused gunman is an avowed anti-Semite.

“Hate is not political. It is not blue or red, it’s not male or female, it doesn’t know any of those divisions,” Myers told The Washington Post on Monday.

However, Tree of Life’s former rabbi, Chuck Diamond, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s rhetoric was “awful.” Like Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D), Diamond asked the president to postpone his trip until the community has finished mourning.

“I would plead with the president to wait,” Diamond said. “I also hope he would come in and offer his condolences after we have buried them and had a chance to mourn.”

Funerals are scheduled to run at least through Friday.

Tens of thousands of people have signed an open letter published by a progressive Jewish organization, Bend the Arc, saying that Trump would not be welcome unless he denounced white nationalism and stopped “targeting” minorities in his rhetoric and policies.

“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the letter says. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.”

The White House woke up to a new furor on Tuesday morning, as video spread virally from a Monday evening rally in which Vice President Pence prayed for the synagogue’s victims with the leader of a “Messianic synagogue” who urges Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah — a movement condemned by Jewish leaders as Christian evangelism in disguise.

A Pence aide told The Post that Rabbi Loren Jacobs was invited to the Michigan rally by Lena Epstein, a Republican congressional candidate, and said Pence did not know who the religious leader was when he called him onstage “to deliver a message of unity.”

As The Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reported, Jacobs invoked “Jesus the Messiah” and “Savior Yeshua” — another name for Jesus — at the rally as he offered a prayer for the dead and wounded in Pittsburgh. “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God and Father of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and Father, too,” he intoned.

The first funeral — of two brothers, Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54, who had gone to Tree of Life synagogue since they were young boys — is expected to take place Tuesday. Peduto asked the White House to consider “the will of the families” before deciding to visit and to contact them to see “if they want the president to be here.”

Peduto said “all attention [Tuesday] should be on the victims.” He also pointed to the logistical issues raised by a presidential visit, which requires intense security measures.

“We do not have enough public safety officials to provide enough protection at the funerals and to be able at the same time draw attention to a potential presidential visit,” Peduto told reporters Monday.

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The man accused in the attack — the deadliest on Jews in American history — made his first court appearance Monday, two days after the mbadacre. Robert Bowers, a 46-year-old truck driver, was using a wheelchair in federal court because of injuries he sustained in a gun battle with police at the synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. He allegedly told authorities upon his arrest that he was seeking to kill Jews, and repeated that pronouncement when he arrived in the emergency room at Allegheny General Hospital, where some of the doctors and nurses who treated him were Jewish.

Magistrate Judge Robert C. Mitchell read the charges against Bowers, including obstruction of exercise of religious belief resulting in death. Bowers, dressed in a blue sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, appeared coherent and alert. He said little, answering “yes” when the judge asked whether he had requested a public defender because he could not afford an attorney. He was being held without bail.

This courtroom sketch depicts Robert Gregory Bowers, who was wounded in a gun battle with police, as he appeared in a wheelchair in federal court on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, in Pittsburgh to face charges he killed 11 people. (Dave Klug via AP)