Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, led a nearly two-minute prayer at a town hall in Iowa on Thursday evening to honor four U.S. Marines slain in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“Tonight I want to start by doing something a little different: I want to ask you to join me in prayer,” Jindal said at the first stop of his 99-county Iowa tour that just kicked off. “For those of you who haven’t seen the news, you may have seen four American heroes were slaughtered today—there’s no other description for it—and so I want to pray for them and their families, so if you wouldn’t mind bowing your heads and joining me in prayer before we start.”
Jindal then led a prayer for nearly two full minutes honoring the four marines killed in Chattanooga by radical Muslim and Kuwaiti-born 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez earlier on Thursday, in what the U.S. Attorney’s office investigating it has called an act of domestic terrorism. Jindal’s staff caught the full prayer on video and shared it with Breitbart News here. Watch the full video:
Earlier on Thursday, Jindal announced his 99-county tour of Iowa–and he’s starting in Black Hawk County on Thursday evening. A D.C. outsider and grassroots conservative, Jindal is aiming to build an insurgent campaign to sweep through Iowa into the Republican nomination.
Jindal said in his statement announcing the 99-county tour of Iowa:
Visiting every county in Iowa is about meeting people face to face, at town halls, in restaurants, at businesses and in folks’ homes. There’s no substitute for looking people in the eye when you’re answering the tough questions. Unlike some candidates, I’m not afraid to answer the third, fourth or tenth question on an issue. We need a doer, not a talker. We need someone with executive experience, not another first-term Senator who needs on-the-job training. Above all, we have to stop hiding who we are as conservatives and endorse our own principles. We need someone who is unafraid to stand up for our beliefs and can show that our ideas can transform people’s lives for the better. As I take my record and ideas across the state, I’m asking folks to meet with me and join a movement. I’m asking people to believe again; to believe again in the power of conservative ideas and to believe again in America.
Earlier on Thursday, Jindal was the first presidential candidate to strongly condemn the act of terror in Tennessee–and he’s been one of the leading GOP voices pushing for saner controls on Muslim immigration to the United States.