Trump reverses course, will order American flags lowered for newspaper mass murder victims

President Donald Trump has reversed course and will order American flags lowered to half-staff in honor of the mass murder victims at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, after initially declining the request.

CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported Tuesday morning's turn of events on Twitter:

How did this all start?

Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley asked the White House over the weekend through Maryland’s congressional delegation to order American flags lowered, but the request was denied, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Trump ordered American flags lowered after previous mass murders, such as for the 10 killed at Santa Fe (Texas) High School in May and the 17 killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February, the paper said.

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

The Gazette published an open letter Sunday in which it thanked the public for its support — and took a swipe at Trump without mentioning his name. “We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people,” the open letter reads, quoting Trump's dig against the media.

Numerous members of the media have called out Trump's rhetoric as stoking the fires of hostility toward journalists while others blamed the president directly for what happened at the Gazette last week.

• A Reuters editor told Trump “blood is on your hands” over the Gazette mass murder — and then apologized and deleted his tweet after intense backlash.
• A newspaper reporter changed his Twitter profile to “former newspaper reporter” after tweeting that the Gazette killer was a Trump supporter who dropped his Make America Great Again hat before carrying out the deed.
• The suspect was later identified as a man who “had obsessively harassed and threatened the publication’s journalists for years.”
• Even after the revelation, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin characterized Trump's “fake news” complaint as code for “every nutcase in America to come after” journalists.

What else did the Annapolis mayor say about the flag request?

Buckley previously thought he might lower the city’s American flags regardless of Trump’s decision, but he told the Sun that his wife talked him out of doing that.

“At this point in time, it would start to polarize people, and I don’t want to make people angry,” the mayor told the Sun.

Buckley added to the paper that he hoped having American flags lowered nationwide would help keep widespread attention on the attack.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, ordered Maryland state flags lowered to half-staff from Friday through sunset on Monday, the Sun reported.

(H/T: Mediaite)