“Most expect the president to act as a consoler-and-chief in the face of tragedy, not to take to the podium and launch into a partisan tirade aimed at his political opponents,” said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Then again, this is the President who flew to Las Vegas for a campaign fundraiser just after the American Embassy in Benghazi was attacked by terrorists, so sadly it seems more of the rule than the exception.”

While some Republicans fumed at the president’s partisanship, his allies defended his handling of the situation as the burden of leadership.

“The president is always going to be criticized … he is often in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation,” said Matt Miller, the former top spokesman in Obama’s Justice Department. “The truth is, he has to do a lot of things at once — he has to speak to national tragedies, he has to plan for upcoming fiscal challenges, and that’s what he did. He tried to walk and chew gum, as he’s said before.

“I’m sure they knew they would be criticized by some people, but you can’t be oversensitive to the criticism if you’re in the White House. The president was still appropriately sensitive to [the situation] by speaking about it,” Miller added.