Former Vice President Joe Biden issued a statement Friday to mark the fourth anniversary of the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida, leaving out the fact that the perpetrator was a radical Islamist loyal to the so-called “Islamic State.”
Omar Mateen, 29, killed 49 people and wounded 68 at the Pulse on June 12, 2016, in what was then the worst mass shooting event in American history. He pledged his allegiance to ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the course of the attack.
However, the left has since obscured the motives of the murder. The LGBTQ community has claimed it was a homophobic hate crime, even though investigators concluded Mateen had not known the Pulse was a gay night club when he targeted it.
President Barack Obama called it an act of “terror” at the time, but the media and the Democrats obscured the connection to ISIS, in keeping with the standards of political correctness encouraged by the Obama administration for eight years.
Biden’s statement was in keeping with that practice of obscuring the role of the Islamic State, or radical Islam in general. Instead, he attempted to link the Pulse shooting with shootings by white supremacists, and gun violence in general, blaming Republicans:
Four years ago, as members of the LGBTQ+ community were gathered together for “Latin Night” at Pulse nightclub during Pride Month, a terrorist armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire. He killed 49 innocent people and injured many more — at the time, the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman. And still today, it remains the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in American history.
Sadly, all these years later, terrorism, mass shootings, and hate crimes continue to rip apart our American communities. Our places of worship have been attacked, Hispanics have been targeted in places like El Paso, the death toll from mass shootings continues to mount, and LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender women of color, are disproportionately targeted by violence.
The inaction of Republican lawmakers to address the scourge of gun violence in America is unacceptable, and Jill and I stand with the survivors of mass shootings and all the family members of victims to support the #HonorThemWithAction campaign.
We have much more to do to create a world free of terrorism, hate, bigotry, and violence — and that work has to start by making sure every person has a plan to vote in November. As President, I will continue standing with you to build a more equal, more inclusive United States, where every member of the LGBTQ+ community is safe and respected.
The #HonorThemWithAction campaign is a political effort by LGBTQ+ organizations to turn out the vote.
U.S. forces killed al-Baghdadi last October. President Donald Trump said at the time: “He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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