Joe Biden appeared to joke around with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House about the idea that Christians were targeted by now-deceased transgender Audrey Hale, who allegedly shot and killed children and staff at a Nashville Christian grade school on Monday.
Valiant News reported yesterday that Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling for the FBI and DHS to launch a federal hate crime investigation into Tennessee’s devastating Covenant School slaughter to explore Hale’s “manifesto” and determine if she deliberately sought to target Christians.
Biden on Tuesday appeared to joke around about Hawley’s comments when a reporter asked him if he also believed that Christians were targeted.
“I have no idea,” Biden said, followed by the reporter’s question about Hawley, to which he joked: “Well, I probably don’t then.”
“No, I’m joking,” Biden added. “I have no idea.”
Responding to a tweet by CNN reporter DJ Judd, who reported on Biden’s answer, Hawley tweeted “What a disgrace.”
“There’s nothing remotely funny about hate crimes,” Hawley wrote in a separate tweet.
Hawley had penned a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday urging the officials to investigate Hale’s alleged shooting as an anti-Christian hate crime.
“Yesterday the nation witnessed the vicious murder of small schoolchildren in Nashville, Tennessee,” Hawley began. “An individual identified by police as Audrey Hale killed six people–students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, and employees Cynthia Peak, Katherine Koonce, and Michael Hill–in a murderous rampage at a Christian school known as The Covenant School.”
“It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence.’ But properly speaking, that is false. Police report that the attack here was ‘targeted’–targeted, that is, against Christians.”
Hawley said he wants federal investigators to determine “how this crime occurred, and who may have influenced the deranged shooter to carry out these horrific crimes.” He added, “Hate that leads to violence must be condemned. And hate crimes must be prosecuted.”
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This news and commentary by Andrew White originally appeared on Valiant News.
