ORLANDO, Fla. – President Barack Obama brought words of comfort but no easy answers on Thursday to grieving families in Orlando, striving to help the community heal even while investigators were still struggling to make sense of the carnage at a gay nightclub.
As Orlando prepared to bury its first victims from the mass shooting, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden spent hours meeting privately with survivors of the attack, victims' relatives and police officers who responded to the scene on Sunday, when 49 people were killed.
"Today, once again, as has been true too many times before, I held and hugged grieving family members and parents, and they asked, why does this keep happening? And they pleaded that we do more to stop the carnage," Obama said after the meeting.
Obama and Biden also met with doctors and surgeons who treated more than 50 victims of the shooting. As of Thursday morning, 23 of 44 victims taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center remain hospitalized.
"As one doctor had said ... after the worst of humanity reared its evil head, the best of humanity came roaring back," Obama said.
He then touched on the ways to prevent such tragedies in the future, saying that "if we want to show the best of humanity, we're all going to have to work together, at every level of government, across political lines."
He said the U.S. must continue to be "relentless" against ISIL and Al Qaeda networks and financing.
"We are going to destroy them," he said.
But he pointed out that the last two terrorist attacks on the U.S., Orlando and San Bernardino, were "homegrown."
"It's going to take more than just our military, more than just our intelligence teams," Obama said. "If you have lone wolf attacks like this, hatched in the minds of disturbed persons, we're going to have to take different kinds of steps to prevent these kinds of things from happening."
READ: Obama's remarks outside Dr. Phillips Center
Under rainy skies, the Obama and Biden walked slowly up to a sea of flowers, signs and American flags and kneeled low to place the white wreaths. The two also attended at a prayer service at the Amway Center.
Marilyn Sides, one of several chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team came in from across the country to help with the healing process, opened the service with a prayer.
"Father, the hurting, those who have so many things that are coming against them right now. The emotions and a raging. Father, I just pray that you help these families. Their hearts are broken because they know this could happen to them. And we are just all sad and that our country has gotten to this point."
The low-key presidential visit reflected the challenge for the president to find something meaningful to say about an attack that has stoked a wide mix of fears about terrorism, guns and violence against gays.
Obama's call for solidarity and empathy stood in contrast to the roiling political debate in Washington and the campaign trail that has sprung up since the attack. Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican and frequent Obama critic, accused the president of being "directly responsible" for the shooting because, he said, Obama had allowed the growth of the Islamic State group on his watch.
The gunman had made calls during the attack saying he was an Islamic State supporter. But CIA Director John Brennan said Thursday that the agency has found no connection between the gunman and any foreign terrorist organization.
The White House had no immediate response to McCain's comments.
Investigators were working to reconstruct the movements of the 20-year-old shooter before he opened fire at the Pulse dance club, including what his wife may have known about the attack. The Senate Homeland Security Committee's chairman sent a letter to Facebook asking for help with messages denouncing the "filthy ways of the west" left on Facebook accounts believed to be associated with Mateen before and during the attack.
Outside the Amway Center, hundreds gathered in punishing heat hoping to get a glimpse of the president -- including some who knew victims of the shooting. Brittany Woodrough, 20, was still in shock as she recalled one of the victims, Jason Benjamin, whom she described as a close friend.
"Seeing President Obama here makes it real," Woodrough said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said part of Obama's goal was to show solidarity with gays and lesbians who were targeted in the attack. He called the visit a "solemn responsibility" that had weighed heavily on the president in the days since the attack.
"The president understands that he is a symbol of the country," Earnest said.
Obama's call for rejecting bigotry against gays and lesbians is complicated by the possibility that the gunman may have been wrestling with his own sexuality. The FBI has been looking into reports that Mateen frequented the nightspot and reached out to men on gay dating apps.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican frequently at odds with Obama, greeted the president on the airport tarmac upon his arrival. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, also a Republican, traveled with Obama from Washington, along with Rep. Corrine Brown, a Democrat who represents parts of the city as well as Jacksonville. Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who arrived on a separate flight joined Obama on the visit to the grieving city.
The investigation and makeshift memorials in Orlando have seemed a world away from Washington and the presidential campaign, where initial horror has quickly given way to a vicious political brawl.
In Congress, the attack has spurred another bitter fight over gun control, exposing deep frustration among supporters of stricter gun laws that no level of mass casualty seems to be enough to force gun control opponents to reconsider.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, whose state of Connecticut shouldered the killing of 20 children in Newtown in 2012, undertook a roughly 15-hour filibuster that lasted into the early hours of Thursday. As he yielded the floor, Murphy said GOP leaders had committed to hold votes on expanded gun background checks and a ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has expanded his call for temporarily barring foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. - even though the attacker was an American - and said the president "prioritizes" America's enemies over its people. Yet in an unexpected twist, Trump said he planned to meet with the National Rifle Association "about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no-fly list, to buy guns."
For Obama, the trip to Orlando was an unwelcome return to one of the most difficult roles a president must fulfill: trying to reassure the nation at times when few words seem capable of providing much comfort. Obama has lamented the frequency with which he's had to perform that duty, calling his inability to enact stricter gun laws the biggest frustration of his presidency.
Obama also traveled Fort Hood, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; Aurora, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut; Rosewood, Oregon; and San Bernardino, California after mass shootings.