Be it El Paso or Charlottesville, there is something ritualistic about how the White House responds to tragedy.
On Monday, two days after a white supremacist gunman walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and opened fire on an overwhelmingly Latino crowd of shoppers, killing 22 people, Donald Trump marched before the cameras in the White House.
The president read a 10 minute prepared speech condemning white supremacy with all the enthusiasm and sincerity of a miscreant student reading a letter of apology for his behaviour to the school principal. Some of the words echoed those of his daughter Ivanka.
The next day he was back on Twitter, his regular forum for communication, bashing those who had the gall to point out his years of racist dog whistling helped create the climate of hate in which the gunman could see himself as a soldier going over the top alone to save the White Race.
Mr Trump had given a similar performance in front of a teleprompter two summers ago, when a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia plunged into violence that left one person dead. Then, as now, the press reported that Ivanka had acted as a calming influence on him.
But on that occasion, too, it took less than two days for him to speak off the cuff and create equivalence between the torch light marchers who chanted “Jews will not replace us” and those who demonstrated against them.
Just how important his mishpocheh are in shaping Mr Trump’s actions is difficult to pin down journalistically. Most of the Washington press corps operates at a remove in this most closed off of administrations.
Gossip and rumour have replaced fact when it comes to reporting on the White House, but what is clear is the influence which two young Jews— son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his honorary son and senior adviser Stephen Miller — have with the President.
In the spring, the pair put forward a new plan for controlling immigration. Nothing much has been heard about it since. Of the two young men formulating the administration’s stance on immigration, it is Mr Miller who has had the larger role in staking out its ethno-nationalist tone — first as a speech writer, then as senior adviser with the authority to “kick ass” on border issues.
Mr Miller reportedly told a White House colleague: “I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.” He also wanted a White House press release to be issued every time a refugee or immigrant committed a “gruesome” crime.
He was not taken aback when the Charlottesville wannabe Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”; it is not likely he will reconsider his worldview reading through reports that Patrick Crusius, the El Paso suspect, posted a manifesto voicing concerns about Mexicans replacing white people.
His manifesto of white supremacist hate was quickly taken down by the host server but reports from those who have seen leaked copies if not verbatim, phrases indicate that many of the phrases in the 2,300-word screed are close, that have emanated from the mouth of President Donald Trump.
There was another mass killing last weekend in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were gunned down. Mass shootings in the US now divide into two clear categories. Some of these atrocities are clearly the work of disturbed people who should have no access to guns. This category includes school shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut and Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
Then there are the hate crimes: last year’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, the murders at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina and Saturday’s shooting in El Paso.
It is not clear where the Dayton atrocity falls, although a woman claiming to have been romantically involved with the shooter for a few months says on their first date he played her a video of the Tree of Life shootings.
The FBI is now investigating whether this shooting was also an act of domestic terrorism.
What is clear is that Donald Trump’s words, the ones he reads from a teleprompter written for him by Stephen Miller, and the contradictory ones he tweets or speaks off the cuff, will not change because of El Paso and Dayton.
Just three weeks ago, Peter Baker, the New York Times chief White House correspondent, started an article about a different racial imbroglio this way: “President Trump woke up on Sunday morning, gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. It was not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last.”
Nor is this likely to be the last time his words lead white supremacists to commit mass murder.
