The family of a couple who died in the El Paso, Texas, shootings protecting their baby is receiving death threats for associating with President Donald Trump on his trip to El Paso to console victims of the shooting.
The brother of the killed couple and uncle of the injured two-month-old, Tito Anchondo, spoke out against the criticism and the hate-mongering in the wake of the shooting.
“We should be coming together as a country at this time instead of threatening each other with hate messages,” he told the Houston Chronicle.
Anchondo, who posed in a photo with Trump and Melania at the hospital with the child, said that the president was there to console the victims of the shooting and not there to push a “political agenda.”
“He was just there as a human being, consoling us and giving us condolences,” Anchondo said. The president “wasn’t there to be pushing any kind of political agenda.”
The first lady’s office released the photo on Thursday, and it had received backlash online from critics who said it politicized the shootings.
Critics said the president’s smile and thumbs up gesture in the photo was inappropriate for the occasion.
But Anchondo disagreed, telling NPR that his slain brother was a Trump supporter and his family is Republican.