The elder Mateen has previously expressed support for the Taliban.
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Asked if he thinks people would be surprised by his appearance at the rally, he said: “It’s a Democratic party, so everyone can join”.
And when a WPTV reporter tried to speak with Mateen after the event, the Florida resident, wearing a red baseball cap and a moustache, said he did not talk about the massacre.
For 25 minutes, Mateen was captured on camera, smiling and holding a pro-Clinton sign as the Democratic presidential nominee paid tribute to his son’s 49 victims in the June massacre and then delivered her standard stump speech.
A U.S. Secret Service official declined to discuss Mateen specifically, but said that “the roughly 3,000 participants at the Clinton rally in Florida all received the exact same screening”.
Hillary Clinton has not disavowed Mateen’s endorsement because she’s still pandering to Muslim voters.
His son, Omar, killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub, a gay club in Orlando, in June in the worst incident of domestic terrorism since 9/11. He later told a local television station he was supporting Mrs. Clinton for president.
“We will be with you as you rebuild your lives, as you rebuild hope for the future, because we can’t ever let that kind of hatred and violence break the spirit, break the soul, of any place in America”.
Hansen was attending the rally as a guest of Ceballo, who said he was invited by a representative from the Clinton campaign. “This individual wasn’t invited as a guest and the campaign was unaware of his attendance until after the event”.
When WPTV first tried to interview him on Monday after his rally appearance, he said only that he’d been “cooperating” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Hillary Clinton is someone who my son supported”.
“That would be much better”, he told WPTV.
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Mateen told WPTV he was “invited” by the Democratic Party to the event, but explained, “I’m a member, so as a member I get the invitations, so there was nothing particular about it”.
