How did Donald Trump’s visits to Dayton and El Paso go?

America was gripped by a now familiar angst and division yesterday, as Donald Trump visited the sites of the two mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas, facing protesters on both sides of the issues of firearm legislation and his leadership.

Angry at legislative inaction, and what they consider to be the president’s personal part in the rise in white nationalism - it was a white nationalist behind the massacre in El Paso - people lined the streets as his motorcade advanced, shouting and waving placards. In places, they were confronted by the president’s backers.

Trump’s trip, taken with his wife Melania, was announced on Tuesday.

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The president opened with scripted, unifying words on the issue of increased background checks - the system whereby people purchasing a gun would be vetted by law enforcement. The US already has some background checks, but there is pressure to increase their scope and thoroughness.

Both the weekend's shooters passed background checks.

“I’m looking to do background checks, I think background checks are important... I think both Republicans and Democrats are getting close,” he said en route to Dayton.

“We’re dealing with leadership right now. And you know, you have two sides that are very different on this issue. And let’s say all good people, but two sides are very different.”

However, despite its stated aims of “honouring”, “comforting”, and “thanking”, perhaps unsurprisingly, the trip elicited controversy and argument from the outset.

Asked if he would support a ban on military-style assault rifles, Trump said there was “no political appetite for that at this moment”.

Since the weekend’s shootings, which occured within 24 hours of each other, and left 32 people dead, there have been widespread accusations that Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, racially-charged invective, and conciliatory messaging towards white nationalism, have created the conditions for domestic right-wing terrorism to thrive.

The El Paso shooter, who was captured at the scene after murdering 22 people in a Wal Mart close to the Mexican border, is a self-identified white nationalist who published a manifesto prior to the shooting that echoed some Trumpian themes that describe an ‘invasion’ of illegal immigrants.

Early yesterday, as he boarded Marine One to travel to Dayton, Trump pointed to the left-leaning credentials of the shooter in Dayton, saying: “the Dayton situation, he was a fan of Antifa, he was a fan of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, nothing to do with Trump, but nobody ever mentions that.”

Once in Dayton, Trump visited the hospital that treated the victims. He was shown around by the city’s Mayor Nan Whaley, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Soon after, as he travelled from Dayton to El Paso, Trump took to Twitter to criticise his hosts.

However, it is unclear where Trump saw the misrepresentation of his hospital visit. As USA Today reports, “The Cincinnati Enquirer… was with Whaley when she found out about the tweets from an aide as she sat in a booth in a local restaurant talking to reporters… ‘Where is it, I don’t see it,’ Whaley said looking at her phone. ‘I’m confused. We said he was treated very well. I don’t know what he’s talking about misrepresenting.’”

"Oh well. He lives in his world of Twitter," she added.

“Whaley did not contradict Trump's version of events of his hospital visit, only saying, ‘I think the victims and first responders were grateful that the president of the United States came to Dayton,’" Business Insider reports.

Senator Brown has never run for president.

“It is unclear what part of the news conference Trump… [was] referring to as Brown made clear during his time speaking to the press that the president ‘did the right things’ during his stop at the hospital,” Fox News acknowledges. Both Brown and Whaley did use the opportunity to criticise the president’s record on race and immigration.

When he arrived in El Paso, “the president was met with calls to stay away, as hundreds of residents had gathered in the city’s Washington Park, mere streets from the US-Mexico border, to denounce Trump,” says Vivien Ho in the Guardian. “With much of the president’s own rhetoric reflected in the El Paso shooter’s anti-immigrant and racist manifesto, many felt that the visit was throwing salt into the wound.”

Standing under the sweltering sun, they held signs reading “Trump is a racist” and “Protect our kids, not the NRA.” Volunteers passed out water and registered people to vote.

“This president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation,” said Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden yesterday in Burlington, Iowa. “We have a president who has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation. Trump offers no moral leadership, seems to have no interest in unifying this nation… Indeed, we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced the political strategy of hate, racism and division.”

As Jonathan Allen writes for NBC, “One day after calling for national unity, denouncing racism and declaring himself open to bipartisan solutions to mass shootings, the president brought the conversation back to himself.”

Trump’s divisiveness has not hurt him in the opinion polls, however. The New York Times’ Nate Cohn points out that despite the turmoil and controversy of his presidency, by many measures Trump’s approval ratings continue to climb.