Last Thursday - the day before 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley was laid to rest, President Joe Biden made a purported "visit" to the southern border which turned out to be a disastrous dog and pony show much like his prior visit in January 2023.
Though the stated reason for his Brownsville, Texas trip was to meet with the CBP, "law enforcement, frontline personnel, and local leaders to discuss the urgent need to pass the Senate bipartisan border security agreement," Biden was doing it against a backdrop of national outrage over Riley's murder, which allegedly happened at the hands of a 26-year-old illegal immigrant named Jose Antonio Ibarra.
READ: Contrasts Between Border Towns Biden and Trump Are Visiting Makes Biden Look Even More Pathetic
Riley was killed on February 22nd after she went for a morning jog near Lake Herrick on the University of Georgia campus. Thursday will be the two-week anniversary of her death. And yet as we get closer to that mark, and as his administration gets peppered with questions about Ibarra that they refuse to answer, Biden himself has consistently refused to say Laken Riley's name.
Why?
His defenders will tell you that there is not enough time in the day for the President of the United States to comment on every murder case, and that's true.
But that's not what's being asked of him. What is being asked is that he do what he and/or members of his administration have done in the aftermath of other high-profile cases that have gotten a lot of national attention and sparked debates, like George Floyd's (when Biden was the Democratic nominee) and Jordan Neely's, for instance.
Just a few months before declaring his 2020 presidential candidacy, Biden even commented on the Jussie Smollett case for crying out loud, casting judgment before the facts of what turned out to be a hoax were known:
What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie. https://t.co/o8ilPu68CM
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 30, 2019
Yet there has not been one word from him directly about Laken Riley. No acknowledgment of her existence, no calls for justice on her behalf, no demands for reforms, nothing.
Why is that exactly? Erick Erickson nailed the reason why:
Joe Biden won't even say Laken Riley's name. He hasn't called her family. Her death is inconvenient to him. pic.twitter.com/GFyVjtkxeU
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 4, 2024
Guess whose death wasn't inconvenient to Joe Biden? Floyd's, as exemplified by this tweet posted to the official POTUS Twitter/X account... on the day Riley's family and friends paid their last respects:
Congress must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act so we can make police reform the law of the land.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 1, 2024
Just incredible. I mean the tone-deafness in posting that on the same day as Riley's funeral service was something else considering his administration's virtual silence on her case at the time - outside of a canned statement from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
On Saturday, after saying goodbye to her daughter, Laken Riley's mother, Allyson Phillips, posted a message to Facebook thanking everyone for their support and thanking "my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for being with me and my family during this heartbreaking time."
In it, she also said, "It would be really easy to lose our faith in mankind because of this senseless and avoidable tragedy."
"Senseless and avoidable tragedy" is the perfect description of what happened to Laken Riley, and that's exactly why Joe Biden won't say her name. Because it's a presidential election year, and his political fingerprints are all over what happened to her.
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