Which leaves another question: How could the Pulse attack be a hate crime against gay people if the perpetrator chose it randomly? In their closing statement, government prosecutors admitted that there was no evidence to suggest that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club. 'And hatred towards people because of sexual orientation, regardless of where it comes from, is a betrayal of what’s best in us.”Ī few days earlier, presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a rally, “A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation.”īut during the trial of Omar Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, all forensic evidence suggested that up until the moment he turned into the Pulse parking lot, Mateen had been considering other venues, rejecting them because they were more heavily guarded.
“This was an attack on the LGBT community,” the president said. Four days after the attack, on June 16, 2016, President Barack Obama visited survivors in Orlando and delivered a statement.
