On Wednesday, as President Trump spoke with the families and survivors of the Parkland shooting, he held a notecard with a numbered list of talking points. One read, “What would you most want me to know about your experience?” Another read, “I hear you.”
Samantha Fuentes, however, who was shot in both legs in Parkland, didn’t think that his reminders to be empathetic were all that effective.
“Talking to the president, I’ve never been so unimpressed by a person in my life,” she said to the the New York Times of her phone call with him from the hospital room. “He didn’t make me feel better in the slightest.”
“He said he heard that I was a big fan of his, and then he said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours too,’” Fuentes said. “I’m pretty sure he made that up.”
Thank you #SamanthaFuentes for sharing your story on @InsideEdition She still has shrapnel, classmates on either side of her were killed. ??for your recovery pic.twitter.com/bglOw3xpes
— DeborahNorville (@DeborahNorville) February 21, 2018
Samuel Zeif, another survivor of the Parkland shooting, had a similar reaction to Trump. “He may have heard us, but he’s never going to feel what we feel, because his kids are protected by the people that came to save me and my classmates that day,” he said.
Zeif was bothered by the talking points listed on Trump’s notecard: “Everything I said was directly from the heart, and he had to write down ‘I hear you.’”
Jen Psaki, who was communications director for Barack Obama, explained that while it is typical for a communications team to provide the president with a notecard of names, biographical issues, facts, and figures, it is highly unusual to have to write out reminders to be empathetic.
“There was no scenario where we were suggesting to [Obama], or needing to remind him, how to react to something emotionally, and if we had, he would have looked at us like we were crazy people,” Psaki told the New York Times.
Andrew Pollack, however, whose 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was murdered in the Parkland shooting, said of Trump, “He showed us nothing but love. The guy really cared, you know? He flew us in, he had a bus waiting for us, he made time for us.”
Andrew Pollack, father of one of the victims of the deadly Florida school shooting last week tells Pres. Trump at a White House listening session: “9/11 happened once, and they fixed everything. How many schools, how many children have to get shot?” https://t.co/OTfbk9b9rz pic.twitter.com/RZNYjZfWqM
— ABC News (@ABC) February 21, 2018
“He took pictures of my daughter that we brought, and he said he was going to look at it every day,” Pollack said.