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Eric Trump Posted A Video Of His Dad Landing At Mar-A-Lago & Twitter Is Dragging Him
On a sunny Friday in Palm Beach, Florida, Eric Trump tweeted a video of Marine One landing at his father's palatial Mar-a-Lago estate — and drew an intense amount of scrutiny and criticism in the aftermath of the horrific Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Stoneman Douglas is located in the city of Parkland, Florida, and 17 people were killed there Wednesday, including 14 students and three faculty members.
Following news of the shooting, the president implied in a tweet that he planned to visit Parkland, which is about 40 miles from his sprawling estate in South Florida. He landed there in Marine One, the official presidential helicopter, and his middle son, Eric, was clearly eager to capture a video of the occasion. The video shows Marine One coming in for a landing next to a sun-drenched pool, and Eric's brief caption read, "#MarineOne landing at #MaraLago."
In the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting, many people across social media found the tweet more than a little tone-deaf. That might be selling the reaction short, actually; both in the mentions of the tweet and in people's upset and outraged quote-tweets, it seems clear that whatever reaction Eric expected his tweet would receive was not the one he actually got.
One particularly forceful response came from conservative CNN contributor Ana Navarro, who noted that the first funeral for one of the victims at Stoneman Douglas was being held on Friday. Navarro, a Republican commentator, has been a vocal critic of Trump for years, dating back to the presidential election of 2016.
Author Victoria Aveyard also weighed in on the tweet, offering up an extremely withering response.
"Parents are burying their children today, Eric," she tweeted on Friday morning.
Some of the tweets were pretty emotionally raw, and that makes sense ― in recent years, countless people have been traumatized and numbed by scenes of mass gun violence, on a scale that once would have been unthinkable.
In a tweet on Thursday, one day after the deadly shooting, the president sent out a tweet which appeared to suggest people in Parkland weren't proactive enough in notifying the authorities about the mental condition of the alleged gunman.
"So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior," he tweet said. "Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!"
In the days since the shooting, however, it's been reported that the FBI was given a tip, but it wasn't followed up on. Florida Governor Rick Scott has called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to resign in light of the reports.
Funerals were scheduled for two of the students slain in the Stoneman Douglas shooting on Friday, 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff and 18-year-old Meadow Pollack. According to the city's local ABC News affiliate, the services were so heavily attended that members of the Broward County Sheriff's Office had to direct traffic.
As for the president, his immediate plans are not totally clear. His weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago was already scheduled prior to the tragic events in Parkland, and he hasn't gotten specific just yet about when he might visit the mourning city.
Not everyone is eager for him to put in an appearance, however. Several students who survived the shooting have condemned Trump and the U.S. Congress for failing to pass gun reform laws. Also, Broward County Vice Mayor Mark Bogan has blasted the idea, calling it "absurd," and calling the president a "hypocrite."
"Him coming here is absolutely absurd, and he's a hypocrite," Bogen told CNN on Friday. "How can you come here and talk about how horrible it is when you support these laws?"