Biden visits memorial site for victims of Buffalo mass shooting

Biden has previously said that President Donald Trump’s reaction to a White nationalist rally and the killing of a counter-protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 motivated him to take a third run at the White House, something that his aides have mentioned multiple times in previewing Tuesday’s trip. The President is also expected to address gun violence in America during his events in Buffalo — the nation has seen at least 198 mass shootings in 2022 alone per the Gun Violence Archive, which — like CNN — defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not including the shooter.

In Buffalo, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday, the first couple “will comfort the families of the 10 people whose lives were senselessly taken in this horrific shooting. And they will express gratitude for the bravery of members of law enforcement and other law enforcement members who took immediate action to try and protect and save lives.”

Biden will deliver remarks at 1 p.m. ET and condemn the shooting as “terrorism motivated by a hateful and perverse ideology that tears at the soul of our nation,” a White House official told CNN.

According to the official, Biden will call on Americans “to give hate no safe harbor, and to reject the lies of racial animus that radicalize, divide us, and led to the act of racist violence we saw on Saturday that took the lives of 10 of our countrymen.”

Biden will also call on Congress to take legislative steps to bar those with mental illness from acquiring weapons.

Josh Geltzer, deputy homeland security adviser at the National Security Council, on Tuesday suggested new executive actions on guns could be coming but did not elaborate.

“We have a firearms problem in this country,” Geltzer told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “New Day.” “This weekend drove that home, not just in Buffalo, but elsewhere in the country. And so you will hear more from the President about how we will continue to use executive action where we can to try to protect Americans.”

Biden is also expected to address the shooter’s racist motives in his remarks from Buffalo, calling on Americans “to seek a more perfect union that embraces the diversity that has made us the strongest and most dynamic nation in the history of the world,” the official said.

“Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism,” he continued in the statement.

Buffalo shooting being investigated as a hate crime

Saturday’s massacre in Buffalo is the latest high-profile mass shooting in which authorities have said the suspect was motivated by hate, including attacks at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder, and the district attorney has said he expects to file more charges. Gendron is in custody without bail and under suicide watch. If convicted, he faces a maximum of life in prison without parole.

The US Department of Justice is investigating the mass shooting “as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism,” according to a statement from US Attorney General Merrick Garland. The FBI is assisting in the investigation.

White House declines to single out figures espousing ideologies mirrored by suspect

When asked on Monday whether the President would use Tuesday’s trip to call on Congress to pass gun reform legislation, Jean-Pierre said that his priority was mainly to “offer some comfort” to the community.

“That is going to be our priority with the first lady. I don’t want to get ahead of what he is going to say,” she said, adding that the President plans to continue to call on Congress to pass gun reform throughout the year.

Jean-Pierre also declined to specifically name individuals espousing “hatred” in the wake of the shooting.

Pressed on why the White House was not calling out prominent figures espousing some of the same theories the shooting suspect wrote about, Jean-Pierre told CNN’s MJ Lee it was “because it doesn’t matter who it is.”

“If a person espouses hatred, we need to call that out,” she said.

Jean-Pierre said she didn’t want to “get into a back-and-forth on names and who said what,” but insisted that “if there’s an individual that is espousing hate, xenophobia … just White supremacy type of extremism, we need to call that out.”

“This President has done that … at every at every unfortunate, every violent event that we have seen. Charlottesville, as I just mentioned, was the reason that he decided jump into this election back in 2020,” Jean-Pierre continued.