Donald Trump did not offer much solace to the families of those killed in the mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday.
“And Brown University, great school. Great, really, one of the greatest schools anywhere in the world. Things can happen,” the president said in his speech outside the White House Sunday afternoon. Trump stood alongside his wife, Melania, who remained largely silent as he delivered his annual Christmas Reception.
“So to the nine injured, get well fast. And to the families of those two that are no longer with us, I pay my deepest regards and respects from the United States of America. Thank you very much. It’s a very important thing to say. And we mean it,” he added.
The Brown shooting began at around 4 p.m. local time in Providence, Rhode Island. Around 20 minutes later, an active shooter alert spread around campus. Names of the victims have not yet been released, but Providence Mayor Brett Smiley confirmed that two people had died, with nine injured.
Hinting at vengeance on the Brown shooter, Trump referenced the ISIS attack of the same day, which resulted in the deaths of two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian interpreter in Palmyra, Syria. A lone gunman was killed at the scene, but the president and the defense secretary have vowed further action.
“I can tell you in Syria there will be a lot of damage done to the people that did it. They got the person, the individual person, but there’ll be big damage done,” Trump, 79, said before pivoting back to the Brown University incident.
“And the other, supposedly, they call him a person of interest, so I’ll keep it along those lines so we don’t get ourselves in any trouble, but we have a person of interest at Brown.”
Trump soon meandered away from the topic of the bloodshed in his own country, briefly addressing Sunday’s mass shooting in Australia before completely pivoting to mention that the real point of his speech was “to celebrate Christmas” and the New Year.
“We have an amazing couple of achievements. We’ve taken in more investment money than any country has ever taken in by four times. There’s never been anything like it,” Trump noted in a much more animated tone.
While Trump said he didn’t want to get “in any trouble” by speaking too much about updates in the shooting at Brown, police this morning said they had detained a “person of interest” after several hundred officers were deployed to search for the shooter in the area.
Providence Chief of Police Col. Oscar Perez told the New York Times that the person is in their 30s, while CNN reported that the person was detained at a Providence hotel.
Before his Sunday speech, Trump offered more words on the university shooting after he returned to Washington, D.C., from the Army-Navy Game in Baltimore, Maryland.
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims, and for those that were very badly hurt, it looks like,” he said Saturday night. “We’ll inform you later as to what’s happening, but it’s a shame. Just pray.”
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