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Thursday Senator John McCain told reporters President Obama was “directly responsible” for the attack, though he was clearly talking about the president’s foreign policy and the rise of the Taliban.
Of those, Obama focused mostly on guns. He said that those refusing to act should have “held and hugged” the grieving family members he met, if they need to be convinced of the need for swift action. “The motives of this killer may have been different than the mass killers in Aurora, or Newtown”. And now another 49 innocent people are dead. Another 53 are injured. Some are still fighting for their lives. “They don’t care about politics. Neither do I. This debate needs to change”.
Obama praised the Senate for scheduling votes next Monday on gun control measures, although the legislation is likely to fail.
“We’re working with our law enforcement partners to find out everything that we can about what happened at the Pulse nightclub”, Lee Bentley, the U.S. Attorney for Florida’s middle district said on Wednesday. We can save some lives. “We’re going to disrupt their propaganda that poisons so many minds around the world”.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack but US officials have said they do not believe Mateen was assisted from overseas.
The shootings have fueled debate about terrorism, guns and violence against the gay community.
Obama said on Thursday the crime was an “attack on the LGBT community”, using an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
Soon after, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden walked past some of the mourners and some of the people who have been visiting the site.
Landing at Orlando International Airport with Sen.
Florida governor Rick Scott, a Republican frequently at odds with Mr Obama, greeted the president on the tarmac upon his arrival.
When Obama arrived, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer presented him with a black t-shirt emblazoned with a rainbow-colored heart and the words #OrlandoUnited. The president acted in a similar manner last summer when he asked House Speaker John Boehner to join him in SC following the Charleston church attack.
Republicans, who now hold a 54-person majority in the 100-seat Senate, have blocked a number of Democratic-backed gun control measures over the years, saying they infringed on Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms.
After multiple speeches and press conferences in the wake of these tragedies associated with terrorists at home and overseas, Mr. Obama continues to downplay and misunderstand the threat we face, and has failed to convince the American people that his administration has the situation under control. “That there is compassion, empathy, decency and most of all, there is love”, he said.
The president has often traveled to places where there have been mass shootings including Tucson in 2011, which was the shooting involving then-Rep.
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“The profound sense of survivor’s guilt that some people are expressing is painful just to read, and I think it is important for the president of the United States, on behalf of the country, to show his support for these families and for these individuals”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. One can certainly make the argument, as McCain did, that Obama is responsible for the conditions that brought about the rise of ISIS, for long underestimating the group and, even more indirectly, for the attacks against the west that have followed.
