America
Bobby Jindal takes pot shots at Obama over church shooting
By
By Arun Kumar Washington, June 19
While one Indian-American
Republican governor sought to lay a healing salve after the horrific
mass shooting at a historic American church, another chose to take cheap
political pot shots at President Barack Obama.
A day after the
shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in
South Carolina, the state's Indian-American governor Nikki Haley said
the community is beginning to recover.
"I think there was shock,
and then I think there was anger, and then I think there was grief. But
the one thing that we know is as soon as the suspect was found and they
had him back in custody, the best part about it is now we can start to
heal," she said Friday on "CBS This Morning."
Louisiana's
Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal, on the other hand, sought to bat
for the powerful gun lobby, calling Obama's sombre reflection that the
US must eventually reckon with all too frequent mass shootings and gun
violence as "completely shameful".
"Now is the time for mourning
and for healing," Obama said Thursday after the shooting. "But let's be
clear: at some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact
that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced
countries."
The suspect in the fatal shooting at the church killed nine people, including pastor and state Senator Clementa Pinckney.
"I
think it was completely shameful," Jindal, a potential 2016 Republican
presidential candidate, told Fox News. "Within 24 hours we've got the
president trying to score cheap political points."
He said Obama's "job as commander-in-chief is to help the country begin the healing process".
"Now
is the time to be hugging these families, now is the time to be
praying for these families, now is the time to be coming together,"
Jindal stated. Obama should be unifying the country, not dividing it, he
said.
"For whatever reason he always tries to divide us," Jindal said of Obama. "Today was not the moment. This was not the time."
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])