The Pittsburgh councilperson representing the Squirrel Hill community asked President Donald Trump to delay his visit during a Monday evening appearance on MSNBC.

Erika Strassburger represents District 8 on the city council and joined MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss Trump’s planned Tuesday visit. The previous hour, Rachel Maddow predicted Trump would delay his visit by daylight.

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“What is your reaction to the president ignoring the mayor’s request that he wait until the dead could be buried before coming to Pittsburgh?” O’Donnell asked.

“My first and only responsibility is to my constituents and frankly, I have heard loud and clear — both by email and by phone — from my constituents today and yesterday asking that I do everything possible to keep the president from coming to Pittsburgh while we are burying our dead,” she explained. “And I have to look out for them.”

“Right now, we’re grieving, between now and the end of the week we are going to be attending funerals and we need to be there for each other,” Strassburger said. “We need to take action in ways that are comforting and that heal.”

“Then we can start to think about action that we can take at the local, state, and hopefully federal levels to make sure that we eradicate hate speech by leaders, that allow perpetrators of hate crimes to feel emboldened, and any other action that’s necessary that we are able to accomplish,” she continued. “We need to come together eventually for real action.”

“For a start, we need leaders in this country to lead with love and compassion,” she noted. “I know it sounds cheesy in this day and age in our society, but that’s what needs to happen. In fact, tomorrow at the city council meeting, I will be taking a pledge to eradicate hate from my words and actions, and we need other leaders to do the same.”

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“If we can’t look to the president to do that, then let’s look to other thought and elected leaders to do that,” she noted.

“And next, you know, sensible gun control,” she concluded.

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