President Donald Trump didn’t invite Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley (D) to a White House ceremony on Monday honoring the police officers who responded to the deadly shooting in the Ohio city last month.
Trump awarded the Medal of Valor to six law enforcement officials in a ceremony to which Republican Ohio state officials were invited, but not Dayton’s Democratic mayor.
Whaley told the Toledo Blade that the White House had rejected her request to attend the event.
“We emailed and said, ‘Hey, we’d be happy to come’ and they said that they didn’t want us there, so we did not go,” she said. “We were not invited.”
According to Whaley, a White House official told her senior staffer, “It’s not going to work out this time.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
On the other hand, Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) office told TPM that the Democratic senator had been invited to the ceremony but was unable to attend due to a previously scheduled meeting with Ohio veterans.
After Trump’s visit to a Dayton hospital in wake of the mass shooting that left nine people dead, the President attacked Whaley and Brown for “misrepresenting what took place” in the hospital, even though neither Democrat had criticized him or his visit.
Whaley called Trump a “bully and a coward” in response.
This post has been updated to include comments from Brown’s office.
