Remarks by Vice President Harris Before Air Force Two Departure

Joint Base Andrews
Prince George’s County, Maryland

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Hi.  So, we are — I’m leading a delegation on behalf of the President and our administration to express our condolences. 

The United States takes quite seriously the strength of our relationship and partnership with UAE.  And we are going there, then, to express our condolences, but also as an expression of our commitment to the strength of that relationship and continuing to strengthen that relationship.

I’ll speak also about what happened in Buffalo.  It’s horrendous.  It’s horrendous.  In our country, we have to recognize that we may very well be experiencing an epidemic of hate towards so many Americans that is wrong.  It is taking on a level of violence — in the case of what happened in Buffalo, and we’ve seen it in other places in our country.  And we all must speak out against it.

Hate against any one of us, we should interpret as being hate against all of us, as a nation.  We are a nation that prides ourselves on our diversity as an element of our strength.  And to see what has happened yesterday —

An 86-year-old grandmother who had just been taking care of her husband in a nursing home, was just going to get some groceries.

A security guard who dedicated his life as a law enforcement officer and was known in the community to be one of the kindest, most gentle people, who showed extraordinary heroism.

I think we all have to know that this is something that we have to not only speak about, but we’ve got to do everything in our power as a nation to stop it — to stop it.  There’s too much at stake that we should be working at and thinking about, not hating one another.

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