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ORLANDO, Fla., June 16 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama traveled to Central Florida Thursday to meet with police, survivors and relatives of the victims impacted by the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Obama was accompanied on the trip by Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who traveled aboard Air Force One. Also along for the visit were Democratic Florida Reps. Corrine Brown and Bill Nelson, who flew with Vice President Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two.
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Obama planned the Orlando trip to offer comfort and support to the affected families, friends and first responders from the massacre at the city's Pulse nightclub on Sunday. He was greeted upon his arrival by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who complained this week that Obama didn't personally call him after the shootings to offer support.
The president spent several hours in Orlando, but the trip did not include a speech by Obama, as he has done on similar trips after other tragedies.
"Our hearts are broken, too," Obama told relatives. "We stand with you."
"The profound sense of survivor's guilt that some people are expressing is painful just to read, and I think it is important for the president of the United States, on behalf of the country, to show his support for these families and for these individuals," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Thursday's visit is also intended as a punctuation of Obama's support for greater gun control measures. The rejection of such "common-sense gun safety legislation" has long been a point of frustration for the president, Earnest said.
"Unfortunately, Republicans have blocked every effort to make progress on that priority. Even in the face of a massacre of 20 first-graders in Connecticut, even in the face of the shooting of [Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011], even in the face of other terrible mass shooting incidents in Oregon, in Aurora, in other places -- Republicans have resisted those kinds of common-sense steps," he added.
Republican leaders, though, agreed earlier Thursday to vote on expanded background checks and some gun-control measures.
After meeting with families of victims and survivors here in Orlando @potus and @VP lay 49 flowers at local memorial pic.twitter.com/Q6Ly7bcEY3
— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) June 16, 2016
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama invited Rubio on the trip as a show of "solidarity" among government leaders. The president acted in a similar manner last summer when he asked House Speaker John Boehner to join him in South Carolina following the Charleston church attack.
"This is a moment where Democrats and Republicans can come together and show that in the wake of a horrific attack," he said.
The Orlando trip is one of many Obama has made in the wake of mass shootings nationwide. His most recent trip was in December to San Bernardino, Calif., where an attack killed 14 people at a holiday party.
Rubio, a former Republican presidential candidate, is said to be reconsidering his intention to vacate his Senate seat as a result of the Orlando attack. Thursday was the first time he traveled with Obama aboard the presidential jet.
Not all members of Congress, though, are siding with Obama on this issue. Thursday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., accused the president of being "directly responsible" for the Orlando shootings due to "failures" to quell the rise of terrorism.
"Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama's failures,"McCain said.
Later, however, he seemed to back off those remarks.
"I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible," McCain clarified. "I was referring to President Obama's national security decisions, not the President himself."
