This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump on Thursday privately met families of some of the 10 people killed in the Santa Fe school shooting in Texas earlier this month.

The meeting came at the start of the US president’s visit to Texas.

A White House spokesman said Trump was “moved” by the 18 May shooting at Santa Fe high school, which left eight students and two substitute teachers dead. A student faces murder charges over the attack. “These events are very tragic, whenever they happen. And you know, the president wants to extend his condolences and talk about the issue of school safety,” Raj Shah told Fox News Channel.

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Trump spent more than an hour with families and local leaders at a coast guard station just outside Houston.

The White House did not immediately identify the people with whom Trump met or what they discussed. Reporters were not permitted to witness the meeting.

Before Thursday, Trump was most recently in Texas on 4 May, when he attended the annual NRA convention and pledged that the attendees’ second amendment rights “will never, ever be under siege as long as I am your president”.

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He also touted the administration’s “aggressive strategy on community safety” and mentioned armed guards, armed teachers, mental health and metal detectors but did not mention assault rifles like the one used in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting.

The NRA spent millions backing Trump’s campaign. He has broadly backed the gun owner lobby group’s positions on gun reform, straying only briefly from it after the Parkland shooting, but quickly backpedaled.

Earlier Thursday, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and the US senator Ted Cruz, both Republicans, greeted Trump on the tarmac after he stepped off of Air Force One at a Houston military base.

Abbott joined Trump for the short ride in the presidential limousine to a coast guard hangar where the meeting with Santa Fe families was taking place.

Trump was then scheduled to attend several political events in Houston and Dallas. A White House official did not immediately respond to requests for details about how much money was to be raised, and who was benefiting, from the fundraising events.