Donald Trump has never taken to the job of consoler-in-chief, bringing all Americans together at a time of tragedy to grieve as one people despite our differences.
Speaking at funerals is something that past presidents have done with regularity. Since 1967, according to the American Presidency Project, commanders in chief have delivered 68 eulogies, a little more than one a year on average. Joe Biden delivered 10 in his single term. Mr. Trump, by contrast, almost never speaks, even at big funerals where he might be expected to, such as that of former President George H.W. Bush, although he did at the memorial service for the Rev. Billy Graham, in 2018.
It was a significant moment for the country when Mr. Trump addressed tens of thousands assembled for the memorial for Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist assassinated on Sept. 10. In tone and substance, it was a revealing one, as well, and a departure from nearly all his predecessors.
As a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, I found this to be among the best written, and most skillfully constructed, of Mr. Trump’s speeches.
It is precisely because his words were carefully chosen that they represented such an alarming break. What the president said in his speech — and just as important, what he left out — makes clear what he believes. Where his predecessors used their remarks following tragedies to address all Americans, it seemed Mr. Trump and his writers sought to redefine “all Americans,” narrowing that group to his supporters.”
The essential task of any eulogist is to speak well of the dead, and Mr. Trump did that well. I knew of Charlie Kirk before reading the president’s remarks. I knew him far better after. While I couldn’t disagree more with the Christian nationalist vision to which Mr. Kirk dedicated his life, Mr. Trump’s speech gave me a far clearer sense of the personal qualities — work ethic, fearlessness, persistence — that made him admired by those who shared his views and such a formidable adversary to those who did not.
But presidential eulogies, especially those delivered after shocking violence, are not just about praising the deceased. When the nation is wondering whether we might just keep falling into a downward spiral, the commander in chief has traditionally seen it as his job not to blame, but to unite.
On Sept. 14, 2001, speaking at the National Cathedral, President George W. Bush touched on a similar theme: “It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.”
In 2011, after the shooting of Gabby Giffords, then a Democratic U.S. representative, and 18 other people at a constituent meeting in Tucson, Ariz., prompting some on the left to blame overheated political rhetoric from the right, Mr. Obama took a different approach: “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Mr. Trump, too, used a tragedy to tell a story about who we are. He just defined “we” very differently, seeming to limit that “we” to those Americans who shared Mr. Kirk’s beliefs. He spoke of MAGA triumphs, and how Mr. Kirk helped in their achievement — the Trump administration’s margin of victory among “males under thirty” in the last election, the growing number of young Black conservatives, his administration’s imposition of tariffs. While Mr. Trump didn’t mention unifying the country, he did praise Mr. Kirk for helping to “unite MAGA.” A more traditional president, one who didn’t ad-lib with sour menace about hating his opponents, might have ended his remarks by talking about America’s resilience. A less cliché version of: This scourge of political violence is un-American, appalling to all Americans, and we’ll get through it as Americans.
Trump seemed to nod, in his Trumpian way, toward a more expansive view of America when he said: “The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us. That bullet was aimed at every one of us.” But his very next line clarified who “us” was referring to, and those who disagreed with Mr. Kirk were not included. “Indeed, Charlie was killed for expressing the very ideas that virtually everyone in this arena and most other places throughout our country, deeply believed in.”
Approximately half the country does not approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing in general, and on any number of individual issues and policies or how they are being carried out. Fewer still support the full sweep of Turning Point USA’s right-wing vision for America. They were nonetheless shocked and sickened by Mr. Kirk’s murder. Judging from the president’s speech, you might not know these Americans exist.
When I first heard Mr. Trump’s eulogy, I felt he was blurring the distinction between service to country and service to the conservative cause, between patriotism and partisanship. By my third read through, a new thought occurred to me. Maybe the president, and those writing his speeches, don’t believe there’s a distinction to blur.
Most of Mr. Trump’s fellow Americans don’t agree with this approach. Even last year, during one of the most acrimonious election campaigns in history, nearly seven in 10 said that most Americans want the same things out of life. Few actually support political violence.
In previous moments when tragedy threatened to tear the country apart, presidents reaffirmed that Americans — not on the left, right or center, but in general — are a good and decent people worthy of one another’s care. They took different approaches to preventing violence. All agreed that part of their job was to renew our shared faith, even when it seemed difficult to justify.
In 1981, in his first remarks after being shot outside the Washington Hilton, President Reagan thanked the Americans who had wished him well during his recovery. It was not a eulogy, obviously, but his own mortality and legacy had to be on his mind. “You’ve provided an answer,” he said, “to those few voices that were raised saying that what happened was evidence that ours is a sick society.”
It’s a shame, and maybe even a dangerous one, that President Trump couldn’t find such grace.
David Litt is former senior speechwriter for President Obama. His most recent book is It’s Only Drowning: A True Story of Learning to Surf and the Search for Common Ground. He also writes the newsletter “Word Salad.”
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