Biden Reprises Mourner-in-chief Role, Perhaps For The Last Time

President Joe Biden traveled to New Orleans on Monday to offer condolences to those mourning the New Year’s Day terrorist attack, drawing from his own personal grief as he has done repeatedly during his term in response to horrific acts of violence.

The president also vowed to stand by the community as it recovers from an attack by an Army veteran who drove his pickup truck into revelers in the city’s iconic French Quarter.

“I know events like this are hard — the shock and pain still so very raw,” Biden said at a prayer service at a cathedral near the site of the attack. “My wife Jill and I are here to stand with you, to grieve with you, to pray with you, to let you know you’re not alone.”

Biden pledged to make all resources available to complete the investigation into what he termed a “horrific act of terrorism” by a former soldier, a Texas native who had become radicalized and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

“We will support everyone who lives there, all the people of New Orleans as they heal,” he said. “This city and its people get back up. That’s the spirit of America as well.”

Earlier on Monday afternoon, Biden made a brief stop at the site of the Bourbon Street attack. He stood in silence in front of a shrine for the victims as first lady Jill Biden laid flowers.

The Bidens met privately with law enforcement officials, survivors and family members of those killed in the attack prior to attending the roughly hourlong prayer service.

The visit represented one of the final trips that Biden will take as president, and perhaps the last of several that he has had to make in the aftermath of mass violence or natural disasters over the last four years.

It came amid a busy final stretch for Biden, who was scheduled to travel to California after New Orleans to dedicate new national monuments aimed at protecting tribal lands on Tuesday. The president is then returning to Washington to eulogize former President Jimmy Carter on Thursday, before leaving for Italy to meet with the Pope.

Biden during his term has embraced the role as a consoler-in-chief like few other presidents before him, routinely meeting with grieving families in the wake of tragedies.

In those moments, Biden has often drawn on his own experience with loss. His first wife and baby daughter died in a car accident in 1972, and his son Beau died from cancer in 2015.

“It’s not the same. We know what it’s like,” Biden said during his speech, which came after a reading of the names of all those killed in the attack. “You think of the birthdays, the anniversaries, the holidays to come without them.”

Still, he urged the community to draw on the lessons that he has taken from his own grief and “find purpose in your pain.”

“The day will come when the memory of your loved one … will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eye,” Biden said. “My prayer is that that day comes sooner rather than later.”