By Patrick Reilly | New York Post
Donald Trump tore into President Biden for botching slain Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s name during the State of the Union address and then later apologizing for describing her alleged migrant killer as “illegal.”
Trump had just met with Riley’s family at a rally in Rome outside of Atlanta Saturday night when he took the stage and laid into the president over his border policies in his first campaign event after his major Super Tuesday primary victories.
Trump’s campaign handed out posters with Riley’s face with the phrases “Remember our angels” and “Say her name” on them, ABC News reported.
“He got Laken’s name wrong. Lincoln. Mixing her up with the football coach,” Trump said, referencing University of Southern California football coach Lincoln Michael Riley.
“We share your grief,” Trump said of Riley’s friends and family, adding that she is ‘home with God in Heaven’.
After persistent heckling during the speech demanding that he say Riley’s name, the president held up a pin bearing Riley’s name handed to him by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-SC] and said “I know how to say her name.”
“Lincoln — Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Biden said, both botching her name and using a term considered politically incorrect by most Democratic officeholders.
On Saturday, Biden apologized for using the word “illegal” to the suspected killer, who crossed into the country illegally from Venezuela. He notably never apologized for saying Riley’s name wrong.
Trump told his supporters he was outraged by the apology.
“[Biden] didn’t want to call him illegal,” Trump said to loud boos from the crowd. “He said he should have called him an undocumented and not an illegal and wanted to apologize.”
“I say he was an illegal, he was an illegal alien, he was an illegal migrant and he shouldn’t have been in our country and he never would have been under the Trump policy,” the 45th president said.
Riley was killed while jogging at the University of Georgia campus in Athens.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan citizen who entered the United States illegally in 2022, is being held without bond on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, kidnapping and other counts related to Riley’s death.
Trump added that Biden has “no remorse, no regret” and should himself “be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.
Riley’s mother, Allyson Philips, said it was “pathetic” that the president fumbled her daughter’s name.
“If you are going to say her name (even when forced to do so) at least say the right name!” she posted on social media.
Biden held his own dueling rally in Atlanta on Saturday in the battleground state that secured Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.