Since the news broke on Monday of a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, the White House response has been one embarrassing sound bite after another.
From the facts known so far, three children and four adults, including the shooter, were killed on Monday at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in the suburbs of Nashville. The shooter, a 28-year-old woman who identifies as a transgender man, appears to have specifically targeted the school as part of a vendetta of hate against what the school stood for. While she was said to have attended the school as a child, there didn’t seem to be a specific reason why the school was chosen other than it had reportedly less security than other surrounding private Christian schools the shooter had scoped out.
The shooter was engaged by Nashville police and shot dead at the scene just minutes after the incident began.
On Monday, when Biden was briefed on the matter, this was his initial response as several news networks joined the White House feed to hear the President’s take on the morning’s events:
This is Joe Biden's response to the Nashville shooting, AFTER he'd been briefed on the situation. pic.twitter.com/rAaQC1dUhV
— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 28, 2023
Cringeworthy at the best, but utterly disrespectful at worst. Where was the decorum or even acknowledgment by the President that the day’s events required a more somber attitude and perhaps a greater focus on what happened? Instead, it was Biden doing a stand-up routine pointing around the room, cracking jokes about cute kids in the back, and fixating on the ice cream he has locked in a freezer somewhere.
Even the anchors were horrified when they cut in after being told the President would address the events at the top of his remarks.
Newsweek tried to perform a fact check on whether Biden joked about ice cream in regard to the Nashville shooting, as an attempt to cover for him, but the best they could muster was that it was “taken out of context.”
No, it wasn’t. the video speaks for itself.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reacted to Biden’s antics with disgust:
“To say that he misunderstood the moment would be an understatement,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Fox News later Monday. “You know, the president is watching, you’d hope before he comes down there, the awful scenes from the shooting and the reactions of family members and friends of people in that school. And to be coming down, joking about the fact that he’s Jill Biden’s husband and looking for chocolate chip ice cream is hardly the way to start it,” Christie said.
On Thursday, Biden briefly spoke to reporters outside the White House and was asked a very serious question. A reporter wanted to know if the shooting should or could be considered a hate crime due to the apparent attack targeted at Christians.
Biden’s response was laughter followed by a cheap political shot at Sen. Tom Cotton:
In response to the Nashville school shooting by Audrey Hale, Joe Biden LAUGHS.
He does not care that an act of trans terrorism has taken place against Christians. He does not care that three 9 year old children were murdered.
HOW is this man President?! pic.twitter.com/IvqFVkMJFe
— Anna McGovern (@AnnaMcGovernUK) March 29, 2023
So, it’s humorous to talk about hate crimes against Christians and even worthwhile to dunk on your political opponents while doing so?
Biden actually has the gall to snidely remark that if Cotton think’s a hate crime, then Biden’s knee-jerk partisan reaction is to take whatever the opposite view is.
The nerve of this guy to so blithely dismiss the question in laughter speaks to the lens through which this White House views the world.
Joe Biden is allegedly a practicing Roman Catholic which, if we check the notes, makes him a member of the Christian faith. Rather than empathize and perhaps even draw on his personal faith to address the question, he laughs it off and walks away.
While the families affected in Nashville grieve and recover, the White House has retreated to empty political rhetoric and non-answers to address serious questions in the room.
