Washington (CNN) By his own telling, President Donald Trump had a choice to make Saturday: cancel a planned campaign rally after 11 people were shot dead inside their synagogue, or maintain his stump schedule 10 days before the midterm elections.

He chose the latter, insisting to his raucous crowd of supporters in southern Illinois that scrapping his plans would have amounted to caving to a criminal. It was the second time in a week that Trump moved ahead with his campaign program, even amid acts of hateful terror that have left parts of the nation rattled and uneasy.

"This was a rough, rough day for all of us," the President acknowledged as he took the stage inside an airplane hangar, uncharacteristically late after receiving briefings from counterterrorism officials aboard Air Force One.

"This evil anti-Semitic attack is an assault on all of us. It's an assault on humanity. It will require all of us working together to extract the hateful poison of anti-Semitism from the world," Trump said. "The scourge of anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated and cannot be allowed to continue."

It was a forceful message that had sharpened over the course of the day. Trump's first comments on the shooting, which came as he departed Washington for the Midwest, suggested the attack could have been prevented if the Pittsburgh synagogue had employed an armed guard.

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