President Biden issued a statement Saturday commemorating the five-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla.
The assault by gunman Omar Mateen left 49 useless at the LGBT nightclub, marking the deadliest act of Islamic terror on US soil due to the fact 9/11. Mateen was shot lifeless by police.
“In the coming times, I will indication a bill designating Pulse Nightclub as a nationwide memorial, enshrining in regulation what has been legitimate due to the fact that awful working day 5 yrs in the past: Pulse Nightclub is hallowed floor,” Biden wrote.
But the statement curiously omitted any references to Islamic terrorism or the Islamic Point out — to which the shooter declared his allegiance shortly just before carrying out his fatal rampage.
“I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic Point out,” Mateen reported in a 911 phone simply call.
The Islamic Condition later on took credit for the attack. It also later emerged that the FBI formerly positioned Mateen underneath surveillance for 10 months right after he was overheard speaking at do the job about Al-Qaeda connections and dying as a martyr, the Washington Submit reported.
The FBI deemed the Pulse shooting a terrorist attack at the time.
As a substitute of conversing terrorism, even so, Biden leaned on the outdated Democratic standby that the attack was portion of the larger dilemma of the “epidemic of gun violence” and introduced into a laundry checklist of coverage proposals like new gun command measures and LGBT rights laws.
“Identity politics forbids him from mentioning it,” Jim Hanson, president of the Protection Reports Team, a DC feel tank explained to The Publish. “If it was a white supremacist Christian, that would have been in the opening paragraph.”
Though Biden served as vice president, his boss, previous President Obama, commonly took warmth for his refusal to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Reps for the White Property did not immediately respond to request for remark.
