The Republican senator Ben Sasse’s attempt at humor during a speech for high school students has drawn strong criticism. Sasse delivered the online speech to students at his former school, Fremont high in Nebraska, on Saturday. During the speech he suggested that the students would remember their senior years at their future reunions as “that time when China started a big global pandemic that created the worst public health crisis in over a century and brought the economy to its knees and we had to stay home and everybody was hoarding toilet paper”. Near the end of the speech, Sasse mixed some serious encouragement for students with another shot at China. “Nobody knows exactly how we’re going to beat this thing, but you know what, we’re Americans, we’re Nebraskans, we’ve got grit and we’re going to beat this thing,” he said. “We will bring the economy back. We are going to beat the virus ... We’re going to have to have a serious reckoning with the thugs in China who let this mess spiral out of control by lying about it,” he said. Sasse also joked about psychologists: “Ninety-five per cent of all gainfully employed psychologists – and I’m serious, there are dozens of them that are gainfully employed - their job is really just to help people forget high school ... If you’re headed to college, do not do not major in psychology. That part’s not a joke.” Sasse, who was unshaven and wore a loosened red tie and white dress shirt, also said that in life, the graduates would at times be asked to climb giant ropes. “If you don’t get that joke, talk to your mom and dad. Back in the day when we were a lot fitter than you people are, we used to have to climb ropes all the way up to the ceiling of the gym all the time.” A Fremont school board member, Michael Petersen, called on Sasse to apologize. On his public Facebook page, Petersen said, “You deserved better than the graduation remarks from Senator Ben Sasse. The racism, implying that our graduates are fat and lazy, disparaging teachers, and attacking the mental health profession are despicable.” Sasse is running for a second term in the Senate and in November he will face the Omaha Democrat Chris Janicek, who also criticized the speech. “It’s hard for me to believe that a US senator would make remarks like he did in that speech,” said Janicek. “Ridiculing mental health care specialists, suggesting that the graduates are lazy slackers and using the platform to blame China for the pandemic we have now is beyond reprehensible.” Sasse’s spokesman, James Wegmann, told the Omaha World-Herald Sunday the senator was joking during the graduation speech. “Like he said in the video greeting, Ben’s proud of each of the graduates and he believes their generation is tough enough to help lead us through the bumpy economic times ahead. It’s ridiculous that some politically addicted folks are complaining about Ben calling out China in a joke. He’s said this for months, because it’s true: the Chinese Communist party’s coronavirus coverup wasted time that could have contained the spread those lies cost innocent lives in China and around the world. Pretending graduates are too fragile to hear the truth is silly,” Wegmann said.