Nashville mayor says Trump still hasn't reached out to him about bombing

• Nashville Mayor John Cooper on Monday told CNN that President Donald Trump has not yet contacted him following a bombing on Christmas Day.
• This is part of a broader trend with Trump, who's often been slow to respond to national tragedies.
• The blast injured several people and damaged dozens of buildings.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper on Monday said that President Donald Trump has not reached out to him since the bombing in the Tennessee city on Christmas.

"No, I haven't," Cooper told CNN when asked if he'd heard from Trump since the incident, which injured several people and damaged dozens of businesses in downtown Nashville.

Police say Anthony Q. Warner, a 63-year-old man, detonated an RV filled with explosives in downtown Nashville. Warner's motives remain unclear as an investigation into the bombing is ongoing. His political views are also unknown.

Trump has made no public remarks on the bombing while spending the holidays at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he's spent a lot of time on the golf course in recent days.

And though he's tweeted about everything from the COVID-19 stimulus to the likely override of his veto on a $741 billion defense bill, Nashville has not made it onto Trump's Twitter timeline since the attack.

This is part of a broader trend with Trump, who has struggled to play the role of comforter-in-chief compared to many of his predecessors and has often faltered in the wake of national tragedies. The president has also consistently been more delayed in his reactions to incidents or attacks involving white suspects with far-right ideologies, as opposed to those that have been connected to jihadist groups or sympathizers.

Trump has spent a good chunk of his presidency warning about the purported threat of antifa, or left-wing, anti-fascist activists. Meanwhile, he's generally ignored the threat posed by far-right extremism. In some cases, Trump has amplified such groups. During a presidential debate against President-elect Joe Biden earlier this year, for example, Trump gave a shout-out to the far-right group the Proud Boys. White supremacist groups remain the deadliest terror threat in the US, according to an assessment released by Homeland Security in October.

It's unclear if Trump plans to contact Cooper or comment on the Nashville bombing at any point in the near future.

The White House and Cooper's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.

The president is closely monitoring the news surrounding the blast, Cooper told CNN. The Nashville mayor also applauded GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee for pushing for a federal disaster declaration from Trump after the attack.

"Our senior senator I know talked to him yesterday, she said, and he apparently had been following the news very closely and was committing help from the federal government aspect for which we are grateful and we'll need that," Cooper said.

Andrea Fanta, the mayor's press secretary, on Tuesday told Insider that "members of the White House staff were in touch with the Mayor's Office following Friday's violent attack." But Fanta did not say that Trump had contacted Cooper.

"Mayor Cooper is very focused on securing federal assistance for the people hurt by Friday's violent attack," Fanta added. "Tennessee's congressional delegation has been very supportive of Gov. Lee's request for a federal disaster declaration to leverage that assistance."