Mayor speaks with president
Butler Mayor Bob Dandoy went through a second round of shock just a few hours after he read the news that Donald Trump was shot Saturday, July 13, just a few miles outside the city. The phone call he received that evening was “overwhelming in a different way.”
Dandoy had been communicating with Sophia Sokolowski, an adviser from the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, throughout the evening, who Dandoy said offered her condolences to the city. After Dandoy took a few more phone calls from Sokolowski between calls from other people, Sokolowski told him in her last call to him that night he missed a call. Sokolowski then told Dandoy he had a voicemail from President Joe Biden.
“She said, ‘The president wants to talk to you.’ My reaction at first was, 'President of what?'” Dandoy said. “She gave me a number to call and I did, and somebody answered the phone, a woman. I said, ‘It’s Mayor Dandoy from Butler; I am returning a call.’ And just like you see in the movies, 'Would you please hold for the president.'”
Dandoy had already taken several calls from national news outlets; elected officials of local municipalities and other states; and friends and family asking him if he was OK after Saturday’s shooting. The three- to four-minute call from Biden is a blur, Dandoy said, but the conversation he had was reassuring.
“He was very generous, very warm. He said whatever he could do, he would be glad to put the resources of the federal government at our disposal,” Dandoy said. “He told me he had spoken with Trump, and he was OK. He expressed his condolences on the people who were wounded and died.”
By the time Biden contacted Dandoy, angry calls and emails had already begun to come to the city, saying officials dropped the ball regarding the shooting. While the event did not take place within city limits, Dandoy said having a contact within the White House could be helpful if the angry messages become more threatening.
“We want to be sure that our citizenry is safe, our city is safe,” Dandoy said. “If we have to reach out to the FBI, we can do that.”
Dandoy said he would discover the voicemail message from Biden later, which Dandoy saved in his phone.
Dandoy said the call with the president left him “dumbfounded,” and he is only sad it had to happen under the circumstances it did.
“I want to celebrate it so much, because it's so big to talk to the president, but to have it happen because of this is sad,” Dandoy said.
“At the end, he said, 'Good luck, Bob.’”
