Jeb Bush has raised hackles across the country when he made an apparently callous reaction to the recent shooting in Oregon. Bush called the incident "heartbreaking," and compared it to similar challenging situations he had faced during his tenure as governor of Florida.
"Look stuff happens, there's always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something and it's not always the right thing to do," Bush said at the Conservative Leadership Project in Greenville, S.C., reported The New York Times.
Bush was reacting to the Umpqua Community College incident, which has left nine people dead and wounded seven others.
"I don't even think I have to react to that one. I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting. And they can decide whether they consider that stuff happening," President Barack Obama said at the White House when he was asked to react to Bush's remarks, according to ABC News.
The reactions of the media and the Democrats prompted the Bush camp to term the media's response "beyond craven."
"It is sad and beyond craven that liberal Democrats, aided and abetted by some in the national media, would dishonestly take Governor Bush's comments out of context in a cheap attempt to advance their political agenda in the wake of a tragedy. Taking shameless advantage of a horrific tragedy is wrong and only serves to prey on people's emotions," Bush spokesperson Allie Brandenburger said in a statement, reported CNN.
