OAN Roy Francis
8:43 AM – Tuesday, March 28, 2023
President Joe Biden faced criticism yesterday for his remarks after the Nashville school shooting, in which he joked that he only made his appearance because there was going to be ice cream.
In his first appearance after the Nashville school shooting, Biden talked about his favorite ice cream after introducing himself as “Dr. Jill Biden’s husband.”
“My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband,” Biden said from the White House’s East Room. “I eat Jeni’s ice cream — chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream.”
“By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs,” Biden told the crowd. “You think I’m kidding? I’m not.”
The president later called the shooting “sick” and “heartbreaking.” He said that he hopes this tragedy will motivate Congress to pass a ban similar to the assault weapons ban he helped pass in 1994. The 1994 law had enacted a 10-year ban “on the manufacture, transfer or possession of semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices.”
The law expired in 2004.
After addressing the shooting, and calling on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons, the president went back to talking about ice cream, complimenting Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream.
“The businesses represented in this room stretch across industries, from restaurants to architectural firms to hardware stores, plus Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream. And by the way,” he said. “By the way, it is splendid.”
“If I were allowed to take you upstairs, you got a whole freezer full of Jeni’s chocolate chip ice cream,” Biden went on. “You know it’s pretty dull when you’ve been in public life as long as I have and you’re known for two things: chocolate chip ice cream and Ray-Bans sunglasses, but what the hell.”
The president was criticized for his inappropriate reaction, and playful tone when addressing the tragedy that unfolded earlier in Nashville.
“To say that he misunderstood the moment would be an understatement,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told Fox News. “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. There’s no way to talk about something like this except to say that for all of us who are parents, what we dread every day is the news about the health and life of our children. And so there’s no room to joke in that circumstance at all. And certainly not from the President of the United States.”
Christie also criticized Biden for “playing politics.” He said that it was “the second-worst thing to do” for the president to do in a situation where parents and students across the country are still dealing with the impact of the tragedy.
The shooting, which took place at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, had left three students, and three adults dead. The shooter was also shot and killed by law enforcement who responded to the scene.
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