[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 99 (Monday, June 12, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3385-S3388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



      Anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub Mass Shooting in Orlando

  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I will not be addressing the matter 
before us because I have just come from Orlando, where so many are 
feeling such deep, deep sorrow today. It has been 1 year since the 
tragic attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
  The horror of that early morning still remains fresh for so many, 
especially those hundreds and hundreds of people who gathered at the 
Pulse nightclub this morning on the occasion of 1 year since the 
tragedy. There was quite a ceremony to remember the 49 innocent souls 
we lost. It was a massacre of huge proportions by a terrorist.
  What terrorists want to do is to divide people. They want to 
terrorize them. They inject fear. Interestingly, the terrorist, whose 
name was Omar Mateen--although he changed the lives of so many, he took 
the lives of 49 people. He changed a lot of other lives of those who 
were wounded, and, of course, the families of the 49 victims are still 
suffering.
  Interestingly, a terrorist wants to divide and inject fear, but this 
has had the opposite effect in Orlando. It has unified people. It has 
unified the community as I have never seen before. It has unified our 
State; indeed, it has unified our Nation. So quite the opposite effect 
has happened from what the terrorist intended--other than the slaughter 
of 49 innocent lives. Sadly, these are the 49, and they are all being 
honored today. It was a very moving ceremony.
  One of the causes that came out of the unification of Orlando is 
that--instead of creating a number of victims' funds--they put it all 
into one fund. Tens of millions of dollars have now gone into that 
fund, and it is helping to finance some of the victims who survived and 
their medical expenses, some of the families and the loved ones of 
those who were lost.
  Interestingly, being there, suddenly those moments came rushing back. 
I heard about it early on a Sunday morning when the news broke about 
the massacre the night before, which had occurred in the early morning 
hours. As I raced from my home to downtown Orlando on South Orange 
Avenue, I was able to get on the telephone the No. 3 at the FBI, and he 
gave me authorization to tell what they originally were anticipating 
had happened. Once I got to the scene, I was able to share that. Of 
course, they had a representative of the FBI on the scene. They had set 
up a command post. Mayor Buddy Dyer had taken charge. It was quite a 
scene.
  The tales of heroism are nonstop. The Orlando Police Department SWAT 
team, which went inside--before they could get the SWAT team there, 
members of the Police Department and the Sheriff's Department were 
there. One block away was a fire station that became a triage point. 
First responders got there and were trying to save people's lives. It 
was because of the massive number of casualties--49--that while the 
gunman Mateen was holed up in one of the bathrooms with hostages, some 
whom he had already shot had bled to death. While he was in the 
bathroom, police and paramedics were going in and pulling people out in 
those dark hours of the early morning. Of course, they were using 
whatever vehicle--if there was a pickup truck, they would put the 
victims on the truck. Fortunately, Orlando Regional Medical Center is 
only about six to eight blocks away, and, of course, it is a trauma 
center hospital.

[[Page S3386]]

  About a week later, I went to see the trauma surgeons. A resident who 
had been getting his residency there as a trauma surgeon was so moved 
by that experience that he put on his Facebook page what he was feeling 
and showed a picture of his bloody shoes that he didn't even recognize 
because he was so busy. It was not until the next day that he looked at 
those shoes. He put a picture of that on his Facebook page, and he 
wrote: To be a trauma surgeon and have waves of people coming in, I 
didn't know if they were Black or White; I didn't know if they were gay 
or straight. All I knew was I was doing everything I could to save 
lives.
  In some cases, they would make an initial prep; then they would get 
the victim, who was still living, up to the operating room where other 
surgeons were taking over. In some cases, they did not have time. They 
had to do the operation right there in the trauma center. Fortunately, 
the one trauma center in all of Central Florida is right there at 
Orlando Regional Medical Center.
  So a terrorist, perhaps aided and abetted by his wife--this is an 
open question, and that determination has not been made. A terrorist 
tried to divide us as a nation, just as they had before on 9/11 and at 
San Bernardino and in so many other cases where they had been foiled. 
There are others whom you can't label as terrorists, but they are in 
their own ways--all the killings that have occurred at schools. If you 
lump all of that together, they try to divide us. Yet Orlando came 
together, united. They have a catch phrase for it. It is called Orlando 
Strong.
  America is a nation of compassion, generosity, kindness, and respect. 
Those are precisely the qualities we saw from the people of Orlando 
when they came together a year ago, and this Senator saw that again in 
vivid detail this morning.
  We are forever grateful for the bravery and heroism of the police, 
the first responders, the sheriff's department, the FBI, the families, 
and victims helping other victims. We are forever grateful for the 
trauma surgeons and the operating room nurses and doctors, as they 
saved lives. We are forever grateful for the hospital and how it 
completely accommodated all of this mass confusion and how it forgave 
all of the medical expenses for those who had been victims, both the 
living and the dead. We are forever grateful for those who rushed to 
the scene that night in the face of uncertainty, in the pitch darkness 
of that nightclub, not knowing where the shooter was. We are forever 
grateful for the skills of the negotiators as they tried to talk the 
shooter down. Ultimately, when he came out with the automatic weapons 
blazing, they had to take him down.
  To all of those heroes, we say thank you. To all of those heroes who 
are also the families of these victims, we say thank you. To the 
victims' families and loved ones, we want to say that even though you 
lost those loved ones, they did not die in vain. Out of evil, what we 
have seen is good.
  Thanks to all of Orlando, not only for what you did that night, but 
thank you for what you do every day. A year later, I can report to the 
Senate that we are Orlando Strong.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, a year ago today, Americans--myself 
included--awoke to the shocking news that 49 of our fellow Americans 
had been killed overnight in one of the deadliest mass shootings, mass 
attacks in our Nation's history.
  I recall that day. It was a Sunday morning. I was home, and we were 
getting ready to go to church, as we do. The news was on. We don't 
usually turn on the TV. That day, the text messages were coming in, and 
it spoke about this horrifying incident that occurred overnight. The 
news reports were still sketchy.
  For whatever reason--be it because of our work here or a bad gut 
feeling--I remember telling my family that I was going to get in my 
truck and drive the 3 hours to Orlando to be there because I felt there 
was something beyond the scale and scope of it, a little bit different 
about this horrifying attack. As I drove north on the Florida turnpike, 
the updates on the radio kept coming in. The scale of it was 
unbelievable. The numbers kept climbing, and there was still not a lot 
of detail about what was behind it.
  After I arrived on the scene and was able to interact with some of 
our Federal authorities and State authorities who were there, the 
picture still wasn't abundantly clear, but the one thing that began to 
emerge was, this was the act of a single individual inspired by an 
ideology of hate and supported in the pursuit of that ideology by 
people who before that and since then have been responsible for attacks 
all over the world.
  I think the part that was perhaps most troubling for a lot of people 
is--especially for me, I found myself at that time, 45 years of age, at 
the halfway point between the age of the people who would have been 
there and the age of someone whose child might have been there, and the 
randomness of it--the notion that a lot of young people went out that 
night to have a good time with their friends. It was Latin night. This 
was a well-known nightclub in the LGBT community in Central Florida. I 
don't think that when you get up at night and get dressed and go out 
that you think one of the risks involved is you are going to end up 
interacting with a jihadist terrorist. That is what happened that 
night.
  The other part that was so startling is, so often for so many of us, 
these bad things happen somewhere else. They happen in France. They 
happen in London. They happened on 9/11 in New York City. This happened 
in Florida, just down the street from a place that I had been a year 
earlier--a small business, furniture store whose owners I had gotten to 
know as I was writing a book about small businesses and the like. The 
familiarity of it, how close it was to home, and the idea that the war 
on terror had not just come to America that day but it had come to 
Central Florida. Ultimately, we learned it had come to impact people 
whom we knew through others and whose stories sounded quite familiar.
  We now know it was the worst attack on U.S. soil since September 11 
of 2001. In this time when we are having so many debates about whom we 
are going to allow into our country and what criteria we are going to 
use and from what places they can come, it is important to stop and 
remember that the individual--whose name I will not even say because I 
think one of the hopes he had is that he would go down in history as a 
famous person, but this individual lived in our country for a long 
time. He lived among us since the day he was born. He was not someone 
who had come on an airplane or had recently arrived from another 
culture, another society. He was an American, born and raised in the 
United States. If my memory doesn't fail me, I believe he was born in 
Queens, NY.
  What strikes me is, he benefited from everything this country offers: 
freedom, liberty. He knew people. He lived among fellow Americans his 
whole life. He went to work every morning alongside them. He had all of 
the blessings and the opportunities and everything this country 
provides. Yet even that was not enough to somehow inspire him not just 
to take on this evil ideology but to act on it.
  Obviously, the attack was personal for the 49 families with stories 
of their own and of course the countless others who were injured. I 
know it was personal to the LGBT community and Central Florida. As I 
said, Pulse was a well-known cornerstone of the community, particularly 
for younger people.
  As I said earlier, this was deeply personal for Floridians and for 
the people of Central Florida. I will get to that in a moment because I 
am extraordinarily proud of that community. I think it was personal for 
all Americans.
  When I arrived, I saw these people, largely still--I don't know what 
time it was, but the attacks weren't even 12 hours old. I saw family 
members of people they loved or loved ones who were outside in 
desperate mode. You know that look on your face where, ``I want to know 
what happened. I don't know if the person I love is inside there. I 
haven't heard from them.''
  One of the most chilling things I heard from law enforcement was that

[[Page S3387]]

the cell phones were still buzzing as people were calling their loved 
ones. It brought home that this wasn't just 49 as a number. It is so 
easy to see that scroll across the television set. It is even easy to 
say it now, 49. They were 49 human beings, 49 human beings with 
families who loved them, parents who loved them, siblings who loved 
them. I saw that firsthand when I got there. I saw the look of people 
behind the yellow rope who had no idea if someone whom they deeply 
loved and cared for lay dead on the other side of that tape.
  I remember not long after, crowds began to form and people started 
showing up with signs that said things like: ``We're with you.'' ``We 
love you.'' This was early. I am talking about 12 to 13 hours after the 
attack happened.
  I commend the law enforcement--Federal, State, local--who came 
together and responded. I saw people coming off duty, people who were 
not on duty that day, putting on the uniform and showing up to see how 
they could help. We saw the long lines of everyday citizens bringing 
food and water to support their efforts. Later that day, we saw long 
lines of Floridians lined up to donate blood.

  There is no doubt that this was a community that was heartbroken, but 
it was also a community that was unbroken; that I believe woke up 
stronger and more united than it was when I went to sleep the night 
before.
  I think, ultimately, the man who committed this attack and the people 
who inspired him to do so would have been horrified by what they saw. I 
think they would have been horrified to see First Baptist Church in 
Orlando--a pillar of the Christian evangelical community--opening its 
doors to the LGBT community and welcoming them and their families and 
holding services there. I think they would have been horrified by that. 
I think they would have been horrified by people putting aside, if but 
for a moment, their voter registration cards, their preferences in the 
upcoming elections, their backgrounds, the way their last names are 
pronounced or whom they love. They put all this aside and said: These 
are 49 Americans--and their families--who just died at the hands of an 
evil terrorist. We are committed to doing everything we can to provide 
support for them. I think these terrorists would have been horrified to 
see what has happened since that time.
  In so many ways, Central Florida grew up--and I mean that in a 
positive way--so much in the last year, in terms of coming together, in 
the sense of community, and obviously it is sometimes in tragedy that 
we see that happen. I think it served as an extraordinary inspiration 
to communities all around the country who hope to achieve the same 
level of unity without the tragedy.
  While the attack may have succeeded in sowing death and heartbreak, 
it failed in sowing doubt about our way of life. In the year that has 
followed, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Americans come together 
in Orlando to celebrate the lives of the victims and to begin that 
healing process.
  In the weeks and months after the attack, memorials were established 
throughout downtown Orlando, marking the loss of 49 of our brothers and 
sisters. We saw ceremonies held in every part of the State, from 
Pensacola to Miami, FL.
  One thing that really stands out in particular is, one of the 
memorials was a set of 49 white crosses that rested aside the Orlando 
Regional Medical Center, the trauma center where a number of the 
victims were taken that morning. Those crosses are now at the Orange 
County Regional History Center. Each one of these crosses is about 3 to 
4 feet high and has the name of one of the 49 victims. People from all 
across the Nation visited this memorial, including, at the time, 
President Obama and Vice President Biden. They came to pay their 
respects and to leave a token of their mourning in the honor of those 
taken that night--cards and pictures, teddy bears and flowers were set 
around each cross, and people wrote notes and well-wishes on the 
crosses to honor the memory of each of the 49.
  When the crosses were taken by a police motorcade to the history 
center, one mother--I have chosen not to list her name because it is 
not for me to do, but she was there to assist that Tuesday with moving 
that cross that represented her daughter. She and her husband, I think, 
by now know this, but we share a mutual friend in the Orlando area, and 
I have learned firsthand from him just how hard the loss of their 
daughter was for them.
  In the end, before I am a Senator or anything else I do, I am a 
husband and a father, and I have a child whose name is the same as 
their daughter. I, for the life of me, cannot begin to fathom what they 
have gone through in the past year, along with 48 other families.
  As they moved her cross with her name on it, they saw a note on it 
that had been written by someone in the community. They don't know who 
it was. The note was very simple, but it was very powerful. The note 
said: ``I never knew you but I love you.''
  It strikes me that line, ``I never knew you but I love you,'' for 
those of us in the Christian faith, reminds us of what Christ said is 
one of our greatest Commandments, to love your neighbor as yourself.
  For the past year, we have felt the deep pain. We have also seen in 
Orlando that it is united. ``One Orlando.'' At a time when we can 
always find something to divide us, a community came together to honor 
the memory of those who were lost. Each of them was a son or a 
daughter, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, 
or a partner. In the end, they were a part of our families and our 
communities. Each of them, like all of us, had immense promise and 
hope. Each in their own way were a part of what makes this country a 
great nation, and they were lost that terrible night 1 year ago, but 
they were loved.
  A year later, we remember them and those they left behind. I hope we 
will honor them by finding a way as a nation to remember that despite 
our differences on a vast number of issues, we are still one nation 
under God, the greatest Nation on Earth, the most extraordinary people 
who have ever lived, a nation that is not simply a people bound 
together by a common blood or common heritage, a common ethnicity. 
America is more than a country. It is an idea, the idea that every 
single human being has a God-given right to live life as they so choose 
and to fulfill their potential. I hope we will continue to work here 
and everywhere we can to live up to that powerful idea that changed the 
world.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  All time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Rapuano 
nomination?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. 
Perdue), and the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow) 
is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 95, nays 1, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 142 Ex.]

                                YEAS--95

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Boozman
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Harris
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill

[[Page S3388]]


     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Strange
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--1

       
     Sanders
       

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Burr
     Perdue
     Risch
     Stabenow
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the President 
will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

                          ____________________