Mayor says Trump declined to lower flags for victims of Capital Gazette shooting

“This was an attack on the press. … It’s just as important as any other tragedy,” Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said.

President Donald Trump reportedly declined a request from the mayor of Annapolis to fly American flags at half-staff in honor of the five people killed in the Capital Gazette shooting last week.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley, a Democrat, requested through members of Congress that the president order flags lowered in honor of the staff members killed in the newspaper offices. According to Buckley, the president declined the request.

“Obviously, I’m disappointed, you know? … Is there a cutoff for tragedy?” Buckley said, according to the Baltimore Sun. “This was an attack on the press. It was an attack on freedom of speech. It’s just as important as any other tragedy.”

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) ordered Maryland flags lowered flags to half-staff Friday through sunset Monday. Buckley had thought the tragedy in the newsroom warranted national attention. “It’s not as noticeable when a state flag is down but you still have your main flags at full mast,” he said.

The White House has not yet returned a request for comment.

But Trump’s alleged rejection of the Capital Gazette’s request stands out because of his hostile rhetoric and frequent attacks on the media, going so far as calling the press the “enemy of the American people.” The gunman who murdered five at the Capital Gazette offices appeared to have had an obsessive vendetta against the newspaper, but the attack happened just as the nation was in the middle of a debate on civility in public discourse.

The president has seemed to tone the Twitter attacks on the media in recent days, and, on Friday, he described the shooting at the Capital Gazette as one that “shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.”

“Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job,” he said.

Trump has lowered flags to half-staff after other mass shootings, including the recent rampage in Santa Fe, Texas, that left 10 people dead and the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in which 17 students and teachers were murdered. Trump also issued proclamations to lower flags after the horrific shootings in Las Vegas that killed 58, and after a gunman attacked a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which killed 26 people in 2017.

Indeed, the lowering of flags at half-staff has become somewhat of a mournful tradition after mass murder — though not without its objections. President Barack Obama ordered the flags lowered after the attacks on police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas, in 2016; after the shooting at Pulse night club in Orlando in 2016, San Bernardino in 2015; and after Sandy Hook in 2012, among others.

In 2015, Obama received pushback from Republicans and some veterans for not acting quickly to order flags at half-staff to honor the five service members killed in a shooting at a military site in Chattanooga, Tennessee in July 2015.