Jill Biden visits Waukesha after Christmas parade attack: 'There is no logic to this loss'
First lady Jill Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday to visit the families of those hurt and killed in the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy that resulted in six deaths and around 60 injuries.
The wife of President Joe Biden paid respects at Waukesha’s Cutler Park, where a memorial was created for the victims of the Nov. 21 attack in which 39-year-old Darrell E. Brooks drove his SUV through the crowd gathered for the annual parade. Video shows the SUV plowing over several attendees in the street.
“There is no logic to this loss,” she said. “It is especially unthinkable that it happened at a Christmas parade. All of America mourns with Waukesha.”
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Additionally, the first lady met with the Dancing Grannies troupe at Waukesha City Hall, which had three members of their group die in the tragedy, and the families of four of the six people who died.
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy accompanied the 70-year-old Biden to Waukesha. The officials also visited the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin to meet with healthcare workers who treated those injured in the attack.
Biden took the time to promote getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
“It’s not just another way to protect your kids against COVID-19. It’s the best way,” Biden remarked as she met with children who had gotten their first shot.
With an extensive criminal record, Brooks allegedly drove his SUV into the parade after police responded to a domestic disturbance at his home.
Those killed in the parade attack include 8-year-old Jackson Sparks, 79-year-old Virginia Sorenson, 71-year-old LeAnna Owen, 52-year-old Tamara Durand, 52-year-old Jane Kulich and 81-year-old Wilhelm Hospel.
Sparks, whose brother had also been critically injured but survived, marched with the Waukesha Blazers little-league baseball team when the vehicle plowed into the parade.
“Jackson was a sweet, talented boy who was a joy to coach,” said Waukesha Blazers President Jeff Rogers in a statement posted to the team’s Facebook account.
“He was an awesome utility player and played on the Blazers Wolfpack team. Jackson was tender-hearted with a contagious smile. He was the little guy on the team that everyone supported. You couldn’t help but love him.”
At a press conference held on Nov. 29, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told a reporter that President Joe Biden had no plans to visit Waukesha following the parade attack.
“As you saw the President convey last week, our hearts go out to this community, to the people in Waukesha; that we’ve been in touch, obviously, with officials there; and we’re all watching as people are recovering,” Psaki explained.
“Obviously, any President going to visit a community requires a lot of assets, requires taking their resources, and it’s not something that I have a trip previewed at this … point in time, but we remain in touch with local officials.”
Some, among them former Republican Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, have accused the president and major media outlets of ignoring the tragedy for political reasons.
“You have Waukesha. It’s a mostly white, mostly Christian, Republican-leaning county,” Duffy told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a recent interview. “So, they’re the wrong race, wrong religion, wrong politics.”
“Darrell Brooks, Jr., the defendant, he is black, he is anti-white, anti-Jew, anti-Trump,” he continued. “And here’s the problem with the story is that he has a rap sheet 50 pages long and he’s out on $1,000 bail.”
Duffy argues that the media doesn’t want to paint someone who looks like Brooks as a “racist.”
“So the media looks at that and says, 'well, listen, we’re supporting criminal justice reform and bail reform, and we’ve also said that ... all the racists are like Kyle Rittenhouse, Trump supporters. ... Those are the racists. It can’t be Darrell Brooks, Jr., who’s a black man who hates white people. So we can’t cover the story,’" Duffy proclaimed.
Debra Messing, a prominent actress and outspoken liberal, also accused the media of whitewashing what happened in Waukesha.
“Dear Mainstream Media—a man intentionally drove his car through a parade killing 6 and injuring 50+,” she wrote.
“It was not an ACCIDENT. Call it by its name #WaukeshaMassacre. And it was a domestic terror attack. Don’tminimize. Please.”
The Waukesha tragedy occurred just two days after a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of homicide charges and attempted homicide in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the nonfatal shooting of Gaige Grosskreutz. The three men Rittenhouse shot were in Kenosha in August 2020 to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
While the prosecution and progressives tried to portray Rittenhouse as a white supremacist looking for trouble, the defense maintained that the teenager acted in self-defense.
