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Donald J. Trump is terrifed of America's National Terrorist Organisation

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Author Topic: Donald J. Trump is terrifed of America's National Terrorist Organisation  (Read 253 times)
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: March 13, 2018, 05:55:54 pm »


from The New York Times....

Conceding to N.R.A., Trump Abandons Brief Gun Control Promise

After a made-for-television moment in which he appeared to embrace expansive gun control,
President Trump completed his walk-back on Monday.


By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG | 8:41PM EDT — Monday, March 12, 2018

President Trump said there was a lack of political support for raising the age limit to buy rifles, which is not evident in public opinion polls but is very much evident in his party. — Photograph: Al Drago/The New York Times.
President Trump said there was a lack of political support for raising the age limit to buy rifles, which is not evident in public opinion polls
but is very much evident in his party. — Photograph: Al Drago/The New York Times.


WASHINGTON D.C. — President Trump on Monday abandoned his promise to work for gun control measures opposed by the National Rifle Association, bowing to the gun group and embracing its agenda of armed teachers and incremental improvements to the background check system.

After the Florida high school massacre last month, Mr. Trump explicitly called on live television for raising the age limit to purchase rifles and backed 2013 legislation for near-universal background checks. He later told lawmakers that while the N.R.A. has “great power over you people, they have less power over me.”

But on Monday, it was the president who seemed to knuckle under, again dramatizing the sway that the N.R.A. still maintains in Republican circles.

Students around the country might be massing for a march on Washington on March 24. The victims and survivors of school shootings from Connecticut to Florida may be pushing their states to move on gun control. But Mr. Trump cited a lack of political support for raising the age limit to purchase rifles, which is not evident in public opinion polls but is very much evident in his party.

He said that his administration was studying the issue and suggested that states should decide whether to prohibit people under 21 from buying the kind of assault weapon used by the gunman who rampaged through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Without referencing an Oval Office meeting he had with N.R.A. officials this month, the president acknowledged the group's lobbying successes.

“Not much political support (to put it mildly),” Mr. Trump said of the higher age limit in a tweet, adding that his administration will watch court rulings before it acts. (He did not mention that it is the N.R.A. that is precipitating such court rulings by suing the State of Florida over its new gun purchasing age.)

“To no one's surprise, the president's words of support for stronger gun safety laws proved to be hollow,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said. “Responding to the murder of 17 students and educators by endorsing the gun lobby’s platform is a shameful abdication of the president's responsibility to lead. Shame on you, Mr. President.”

The president's retreat is a stark reminder — if anyone in Washington needed one — that the gun debate remains stuck where it has been for more than a decade. Despite scores of deaths from mass shootings in that time, Republican lawmakers fear the N.R.A.'s ability to stir up opposition in their districts. They continue to oppose new gun restrictions, and even a Republican president with an unconventional approach is unlikely to challenge the status quo in an election year.

Only one gun-related measure, on background checks, seems likely to pass this year, but critics noted that it would only enforce existing law.

“It really to me is simple,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chamber's No.2 Republican, said. “Do people want their whole laundry list of things done and end up empty-handed? That's what usually happens. If you say, ‘I want 100 percent of what I want or nothing’, we invariably end up with nothing.”


Outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., last month. After the massacre there, Mr. Trump called for raising the age limit to buy rifles and backed legislation for near-universal background checks. — Photograph: Angel Valentin/Reuters.
Outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., last month. After the massacre there, Mr. Trump called for raising the age limit
to buy rifles and backed legislation for near-universal background checks. — Photograph: Angel Valentin/Reuters.


In the face of N.R.A. opposition, the president has also retreated from his earlier openness to expanded background checks and a renewal of the expired ban on assault weapons — positions that he signaled during a remarkable meeting with lawmakers in which he demanded “comprehensive” legislation that would include longstanding Democratic efforts to restrict firearms.

Instead, Mr. Trump over the weekend released a modest plan that eschewed gun control measures in favor of more limited bills that would provide weapons training for teachers and create a commission to study other responses to school shootings.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions did announce on Monday evening that the Justice Department would more aggressively enforce the existing law making it illegal to lie on federal background checks and would step up law enforcement presence at schools.

Earlier on Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that the president still supported the idea of raising the minimum age for purchasing rifles, but was committing to studying the issue only because “you can't just decide you want laws to pass.”

“I think it is a really disappointing retreat after all the reality-show rhetoric,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. Mr. Blumenthal, whose represents the state where 20 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, said the president “has taken his plan from the N.R.A. playbook.”

Ms. Feinstein, who has long pushed for a ban on assault weapons, had looked giddy at the president's meeting with lawmakers when Mr. Trump seemed open to new legislation to restrict the sale of the weapons. On Monday, she accused the president of having “completely caved to the gun lobby.”

The idea of arming teachers is vigorously opposed by many members of both parties, law enforcement officials and groups representing the nation's teachers. But it has been pushed for years by the N.R.A., which argues that arming school officials is the best way to protect students and teachers against a well-armed attacker. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” the N.R.A. mantra has gone.

On Capitol Hill, several Republican senators sounded cool to the idea of federal involvement in arming teachers, saying it should be left to the states. “There would have to be tremendous training, tremendous effort to make that work,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.

The White House on Sunday proposed creating the Federal Commission on School Safety, which would study the question of raising the minimum age for purchasing rifles. That proposal came just a day after Mr. Trump himself mocked the idea of federal commissions as ineffective.

“We can't just keep setting up blue-ribbon committees,” Mr. Trump said during a political rally on Saturday. The president said that members of such commissions do little more than “talk, talk, talk” and then, “two hours later, then they write a report.”


Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, is the chief sponsor of the Fix NICS Act, a narrow N.R.A.-backed bill that would improve data reporting to the national background check database. — Tom Brenner/The New York Times.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, is the chief sponsor of the Fix NICS Act, a narrow N.R.A.-backed bill that would improve data reporting
to the national background check database. — Tom Brenner/The New York Times.


On Capitol Hill, the energy has largely dissipated for the kind of expansive gun control legislation that Mr. Trump appeared to support earlier this month. With such legislation stalled, Republican leaders are instead turning their attention toward less contentious measures that would beef up security at the nation's schools.

The only gun-related measure that appears to stand a chance of passage this year is the so-called Fix NICS Act, a narrow N.R.A.-backed bill that would improve data reporting to the national background check database. The House has already passed it, as part of a broader bill that includes one of the N.R.A.'s highest priorities: a sharp expansion of the right to carry concealed weapons almost anywhere in the country.

The Senate's chief sponsor of Fix NICS, Mr. Cornyn, said in an interview last week that he had not spoken to the N.R.A. about it. He sees the bill as a way to bridge the partisan divide.

But even Fix NICS is stuck. The bill has 61 co-sponsors in addition to Mr. Cornyn — two more than the 60 votes required to break a Senate filibuster. But at least two Republicans, and possibly a third, are blocking the Republican leadership from bringing the bill to the floor quickly for a vote.

And Democrats have indicated that they are not eager to consider Fix NICS as a stand-alone measure. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, has warned that it would be an “abject failure and dereliction of duty” if all Congress did was to pass Fix NICS.

School safety measures, meanwhile, are moving forward. The Republican-controlled House is expected to vote Wednesday on the STOP School Violence Act, which would authorize $50 million annually for safety improvements, including training teachers and students in how to prevent violence and developing anonymous reporting systems for threats of school violence.

In the Senate, a companion bill, championed by Mr. Hatch, would also give schools money for physical improvements, such as metal detectors or bulletproof windows and doors.

And even if Senate leaders were inclined to bring up gun legislation for a vote, they are short on time. This week, the Senate is considering a measure to ease banking regulations, and next week senators will be working against a deadline to pass a catchall spending measure to fund the government; the current spending bill expires on March 23. After that, the Senate will be in recess for two weeks.


__________________________________________________________________________

• Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he covers President Trump, with a focus on domestic policy, the regulatory state and life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A veteran political correspondent, he covered Barack Obama's presidency, including the 2012 re-election campaign. Before coming to The N.Y. Times in 2010, he spent 18 years at The Washington Post, writing about local communities, school districts, state politics, the 2008 presidential campaign and the White House. A member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, Mr. Shear is a 1990 graduate of Claremont McKenna College and has a masters in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two teenage children.

• Sheryl Gay Stolberg is the Congressional Correspondent for The New York Times. Based in Washington, Ms. Stolberg has had a long and varied career with The N.Y. Times as a science correspondent; a national correspondent; a White House correspondent, covering the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama; and a Washington correspondent, specializing in political features writing. Ms. Stolberg joined The Times in 1997 to cover science and health policy, and spent five years writing extensively on bioethics issues, including cloning, the death of a gene therapy patient, stem cell research and an experimental artificial heart. She switched to government in 2002, and since then has profiled dozens of prominent figures in Washington, politics and culture — including Supreme Court justices, a Broadway producer, a C.I.A. agent and presidential candidates. She was a lead author of The N.Y. Times's 2012 Long Run series of biographical profiles of that year's Republican presidential contenders, including Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney. In her most recent role as Mid-Atlantic bureau chief, she focused on America's cities, notably Baltimore, covering issues of race and policing surrounding the death of Freddie Gray. Ms. Stolberg came to The New York Times from the Los Angeles Times, where she shared in two Pulitzer Prizes won by that newspaper's Metro staff, for coverage of the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King, and the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake. At The N.Y. Times, she shared in a 2009 Gerald Loeb Award for financial journalism, for coverage of President Bush's role in the mortgage meltdown, as part of a 2008 series, The Reckoning. She has longstanding interests in women's issues and gay rights, topics on which she has written frequently during her two decades with The New York Times. She is the proud mother of two daughters, and loves stories that involve politics, art, culture and history.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Most Americans Want More Gun Control. Why Doesn't It Happen?

 • With Gun Control Nearing a Dead End, G.O.P. Turns to ‘School Safety’

 • N.R.A. Suggests Trump May Retreat From Gun Control

 • Trump Wants to Arm Teachers. These Schools Already Do.

 • Trump Stuns Lawmakers With Seeming Embrace of Comprehensive Gun Control


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/us/politics/trump-gun-control-national-rifle-association.html
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2018, 11:27:12 pm »


Donald J. Trump aka Cadet Bone Spurs whenever he catches sight of the NRA America's National Terrorist Organisation…



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« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2018, 09:01:24 am »


from The Washington Post....

EDITORIAL: Who's afraid of the NRA? Trump.

The president follows tough talk on guns with a weak plan.

By EDITORIAL BOARD | 7:30PM EDT — Monday, March 12, 2018

President Donald J. Trump. — Photograph: Chris Kleponis/European Pressphoto Agency/Agencia-EFE/Shutterstock.
President Donald J. Trump. — Photograph: Chris Kleponis/European Pressphoto Agency/Agencia-EFE/Shutterstock.

“WE'RE GOING TO GET THINGS DONE.” So said President Trump last month assuring students, teachers and parents affected by school shootings of his resolve to find solutions to gun violence.

“You're afraid of the NRA.” That was Mr. Trump the following week, chastising members of his own party for not backing age restrictions on gun purchases as he challenged lawmakers to pass “comprehensive” gun control and stand up to the gun lobby.

Now here's Mr. Trump when it comes to backing up his statements:

“………………”

Yes, once again Mr. Trump's brave words prove to be meaningless as the White House unveils exactly what Mr. Trump wants to do about guns.

“Tiny baby steps designed not to upset the NRA,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (Democrat-New York). That sums up the administration's proposal unveiled Sunday in response to the February 14th school shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida. The plan, if you can call it that, is centered on a promise (no money or details) to help provide firearms training to school employees, a controversial idea long favored by the National Rifle Association but opposed by most teachers and school officials. Mr. Trump also endorsed some modest improvements in background checks that are the subject of bipartisan legislation now before Congress. Otherwise, nothing: not the universal background checks that are needed, no ban on weapons of war, not even an increase in the legal age to buy certain weapons, something Mr. Trump had said made sense but seems to have abandoned in the face of NRA opposition.

“Not much political support (to put it mildly),” he tweeted on Monday. Never mind that recent polls show public support for raising the age to 21. Or that big-name retailers (Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods) have been applauded for voluntarily making the change. Or that even the gun-friendly state of Florida just raised its age limit. Or that a true leader might do the right thing and try to generate political support.

Mr. Trump's establishment instead of a federal commission to study school safety would be laughable if it were not so insulting to the student survivors and victims' families of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who have so eloquently laid out the urgency of action. Not only has Mr. Trump made clear his disdain for such commissions as a way to avoid fixing problems, but also his appointment of struggling Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as its head doesn't inspire confidence in the outcome.

More importantly, Mr. Trump seems not to understand that gun violence is not limited to schools, nor that mass shootings are but one part of a problem that also includes too many lives lost to domestic killings, suicides and unintentional shootings. Three women were gunned down Friday night at a California veterans home by a gunman who then turned the gun on himself. A 9-year-old girl in Milwaukee died on Saturday after she was accidentally shot by her brother. And on Sunday there was a reminder of the horror of the country's deadliest shooting — not in a school but at an outdoor musical festival — with The Washington Post's account of a woman's struggle to recover from the terrible wounds she received from a gunman using a military gun with military bullets. Such weapons, of course, go unmentioned in Mr. Trump's plan.

As we've said before, if Congress waits for leadership from this White House, it will wait forever.


__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • ‘They have less power over me’: Trump retreats from vow to stand up to NRA

 • Jennifer Rubin: Look who's afraid of the NRA now — Trump owes Toomey an apology

 • Joe Scarborough: Not afraid of the NRA, Mr. President? Prove it.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whos-afraid-of-the-nra-trump-is/2018/03/12/e9ff14d2-262e-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html
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« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2018, 01:00:09 pm »



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