WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama was undertaking a grim and delicate mission to Orlando, Florida on Thursday, offering solace after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history while the political world bickers over terrorism and gun control.
Even as the families of 49 victims bury their loved ones, it’s unclear what led a 29-year-old Muslim born in New York to open fire in a gay nightclub early Sunday where he may have been a frequent patron.
In earlier instances where Obama has visited a community in mourning, the president has urged the nation to reject the attacker’s ideology and do what it can to prevent such incidents. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama would deal with the ambiguity in the Florida shooting by focusing on the victims.
“The president’s visit to Orlando has nothing to do with the individual who perpetrated this terrible attack,” Earnest said Wednesday. He said Obama intended to tell residents “that they’re not alone, even as they endure what surely have been several dark nights.”
The White House released few details in advance about how Obama would spend his afternoon in Orlando, and aides said the trip had been hurriedly arranged in a fraction of the time usually required to plan a presidential trip. But Obama planned to meet with families of the victims, as well as with the doctors, paramedics and other first responders who came to their aid.
Obama also planned to speak publicly during his visit “to make clear that the country stands with the people of Orlando, stands with the LGBT community in Orlando, as they grieve for their loss,” Earnest said. Vice President Joe Biden was to join Obama in Orlando.
The president’s call for rejecting bigotry against gays and lesbians is complicated by the possibility that the gunman, Omar Mateen, may have been wrestling with his own sexuality. The FBI has been looking into reports that Mateen frequented the nightspot and reached out to men on gay dating apps.
Since the shooting, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has expanded his call for temporarily barring foreign Muslims from entering the U.S., even though the attacker was an American, and insinuated that Obama sympathized with or even supported terrorists.
Obama denounced both Trump and the GOP leaders who are still supporting him. Many of those Republican leaders also denounced Trump’s rhetoric.
In Congress, the attack has spurred another bitter fight over gun control, exposing deep frustration among supporters of stricter gun laws that no level of mass casualty seems to be enough to force gun control opponents to reconsider.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, whose state of Connecticut shouldered the killing of 20 children in Newtown in 2012, undertook a roughly 15-hour filibuster that lasted into the early hours of Thursday. As he yielded the floor, Murphy said GOP leaders had committed to hold votes on expanded gun background checks and a ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists.
In an unexpected twist, Trump said he planned to meet with the National Rifle Association “about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no-fly list, to buy guns.”
For Obama, the trip to Orlando was an unwelcome return to one of the most difficult roles a president must fulfill: comforting the nation at times when few words seem capable of providing much comfort. Obama has lamented the frequency with which he’s had to perform that duty, calling his inability to enact stricter gun laws the biggest frustration of his presidency.
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(Photo Source: AP)
