Trump flew to Dallas, Texas, yesterday to "discuss race issues" with locals. Yet he excluded the top three African American officials:

"The White House defended the snub of Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall, [Dallas County] Sheriff Marian Brown and [Dallas County] District Attorney John Creuzot, insisting the president would still hear a diversity of views." (from the Dallas Morning News) These are the people who were on the ground, making the decisions.

Police Chief Vernell Dooley of Glenn Heights, a town of about 13,000 south of Dallas, urged the president to support national standards on use of force by police, and databases on use of force and terminations, because “we need to be able to get those bad apples out of our industry, so what happened will never happen again."

The visit was built around a $10 million campaign dinner at the Preston Hollow mansion of billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer, which built the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline. Two dozen donors ponied up at least $580,600 per couple for a meal and souvenir photo with Trump.

And it came amid heightened tensions nationwide since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black suspect pinned by the neck for nearly nine minutes under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer now facing a murder charge.

“What happened two weeks ago was a disgrace,” Trump said — immediately adding that protests and looting in the days that followed Floyd’s death also were a “disgrace” that would have been averted with a more forceful response. His vision, he said, is “force with compassion.”

Digging in on a stance that he acknowledged infuriates critics, he added that “we have to dominate the streets,” prompting applause from an audience curated by the White House.

Trump has demanded a military crackdown on protests, boasting again on Thursday morning about his stroll last week to a church near the White House, where he brandished a Bible as cameras clicked, after military and federal police used pepper gas and rubber pellets to clear protesters.

He's still working on branding, so he throws ideas against the wall to see what will stick. That "force with compassion" is the latest bullshit attempt.

Trump's real reason to be here was the campaign fundraiser, of course, he tacked on the "talks" to disguise that real reason. He spoke to a bunch of people in a prosperous area of town in a large church - churches are one of the main vectors for COVID-19, so maybe he'll finally get some first-hand experience with the novel coronavirus.

[Dallas] Mayor Eric Johnson declined an invitation from the White House. Other black officials in the area were not invited, including the three Democrats in Congress who represent parts of Dallas: Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson and Colin Allred of Dallas, and Veasey of Fort Worth.

Allred, whose district includes the Gateway campus that hosted Trump, noted that high rollers at the campaign dinner would get coronavirus tests from White House medical personnel that aren’t universally available at long-term care facilities or for business owners and customers.

“This is a slap in the face to Texans and people across the country who are still struggling because of our failure to have a national strategy," he said. . . .

Many prominent African American leaders in Dallas were not invited, despite the event being billed as a diverse gathering of faith leaders and law enforcement, among them the Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, senior pastor at the influential Friendship-West Baptist Church.

Citing the scene at St. John’s Church last week, Haynes said he wouldn’t want to be part of a “dog and pony show."

The White House did ask David Wilson, a Dallas pastor and president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, if he was willing "to be vetted” to meet with the president. He declined.

“I just can’t do it,” he said. “I really don’t want to hear the lies or be used as a prop.”

Trump lives in a world of "haves" and visited a place where most people are "have-nots." The optics of that visit aren't lost on people. In Trump's world, the only lives that matter are his own and members of his family.