This might be his best speech ever. Watch the whole thing:
President Obama eulogized the Rev. Clementa Pinckney in Charleston today, just one week after a shooter killed the pastor and eight other African-Americans at a Bible study in a historic black Charleston church.
"We are here today to a remember a man of God who lived by faith, a man who believed in things not seen, a man who believed there were better days ahead off in the distance," the president said at funeral services for Pinckney at the TD Arena in Charleston. "He believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed."
Obama first met Pinckney in 2007 during his first campaign for president, he said.
"I cannot claim to have the good fortune to know Reverend Pinckney well, but I did have the pleasure of knowing him, meeting him here in South Carolina back when we were both a little bit younger," he said.
The president recounted Pinckney’s work as a pastor as well as his career in the state Senate, saying he always worked to help others.
“He was full of empathy and fellow feeling,” the president said. “What a good man. Sometimes I think that’s the best thing to hope for when you eulogize. After all the words and recitations and resumes are read, to just say somebody was a good man.”
Along with honoring Pinckney, the president memorialized the eight others killed during bible study last week.
“To lose him at 41, slain in his sanctuary, with eight wonderful members of his flock, each at different stages in life but bound together by a common commitment to God,” he said. “People so full of life and so full of kindness. People who ran the race and persevered. People of great faith.”
[...]The president also specifically referenced alleged gunman Dylann Roof, whom he described as “blinded by hatred.” The president said the suspect never could have imagined the unity and forgiveness that emerged in the aftermath of a shooting said to fueled by racial ate.
“He didn’t know he was being used by God,” the president said of the shooter, later adding he didn’t realize “how the United states of America would respond not only at revulsion at his evil act but with big-hearted generosity and more importantly with the thoughtful introspection and examination that we so rarely see in public life.”
Update: Here's the last 16 minutes. And the full transcript is here.
