Category: Unpresidential

President says he would’ve entered Florida high school without a gun

President Donald Trump on Monday was meeting with most of the nation’s governors as he discussed gun control, world trade and North Korea.

Trump criticized the Florida deputies who didn’t confront the shooter at the massacre that left at least 17 dead, saying they “weren’t exactly Medal of Honor winners,” according to the Associated Press.

“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” added Trump, who avoided serving in the Vietnam War by saying he had bone spurs.

At the meeting, Trump suggested he might have to break with the National Rifle Association, which has opposed the president’s call for a minimum age on rifle purchases. “If the NRA is not with you, you have fight them once in a while,” he said. He did disclose he had lunch with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.

He blamed the governors in the room for closing mental-health institutions. “In the old days” it was easier to commit people who acted “like a boiler ready to explode,” Trump said.

[MarketWatch]

Trump’s Plan to Solve the Opioid Crisis Might Involve Executing Drug Dealers

While signing a bill that aims to combat the opioid crisis last month, President Trump hinted that he’d come up with the solution to the complex problem, but couldn’t talk about it.

“There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but I’m not sure the country is ready for it yet,” Trump said. “Does anybody know what I mean? I think so.”

No one knew what he meant. “Yeah, I wondered about that,” said Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who was at the signing. “I didn’t follow up and ask.”

Many dismissed the comment as more of Trump’s regular, incoherent ramblings. However, now it seems the president may actually have a secret plan to fight the opioid epidemic, beyond hiring a 24-year-old ingenue as his deputy drug czar and an ad campaign that was supposed to launch during the Super Bowl but didn’t come together in time. Axios’s Jonathan Swan reports that he’s been telling friends for months that drug dealers should face the death penalty, citing policies in Singapore and the Philippines.

“He says that a lot,” said a source. “He says, ‘When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] ‘No. Death penalty’.”

Trump is reportedly convinced that the key to ending America’s drug problems is making dealers fear for their lives and kids fear that even trying drugs will kill them — but he’s also acknowledged that the U.S. probably won’t pass a law mandating that all drug dealers be executed.

Kellyanne Conway, who is leading the administration’s anti-drug efforts, told Swan that Trump’s plan is more nuanced. “The president makes a distinction between those that are languishing in prison for low-level drug offenses and the kingpins hauling thousands of lethal doses of fentanyl into communities, that are responsible for many casualties in a single weekend,” she said.

In lieu of mass executions, the White House may push to toughen drug-sentencing laws. Per Axios:

Trump may back legislation requiring a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for traffickers who deal as little as two grams of fentanyl. Currently, you have to deal forty grams to trigger the mandatory five-year sentence. (The DEA estimates that as little as two milligrams is enough to kill people.)

Singapore has some of the strictest drug laws in the world. Police can perform random drug tests and those who test positive can face years-long sentences. Those caught with more than a few grams of certain drugs are presumed to be trafficking, and in higher quantities offenders are sentenced to death. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte instituted a brutal crackdown on both drug dealers and drug users in 2016. While the government claims that fewer than 4,000 suspects have been killed, Human Rights Watch puts the number at more than 12,000.

Trump has made it clear that unlike his predecessor, he has a cosy relationship with Duterte. He invited him to visit the White House, ignored questions about human-rights abuses during their first meeting in the Philippines, and congratulated him for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem” during a phone call. It was assumed that this was all part of Trump’s general admiration for authoritarian leaders, but perhaps he’s been taking more specific policy inspiration.

[New York Magazine]

Reality

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “cruel and unusual punishments [shall not be] inflicted.” The general principles the United States Supreme Court relied on to decide whether or not a particular punishment was cruel and unusual were determined by Justice William Brennan.[4] In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), Justice Brennan wrote, “There are, then, four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is ‘cruel and unusual’.”

  • The “essential predicate” is “that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
  • “A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.” (Furman v. Georgia temporarily suspended capital punishment for this reason.)
  • “A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
  • “A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”

And he added: “The function of these principles, after all, is simply to provide means by which a court can determine whether a challenged punishment comports with human dignity. They are, therefore, interrelated, and, in most cases, it will be their convergence that will justify the conclusion that a punishment is “cruel and unusual.” The test, then, will ordinarily be a cumulative one: if a punishment is unusually severe, if there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily, if it is substantially rejected by contemporary society, and if there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than some less severe punishment, then the continued infliction of that punishment violates the command of the Clause that the State may not inflict inhuman and uncivilized punishments upon those convicted of crimes.”

Continuing, he wrote that he expected that no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a “cumulative” analysis of the implication of each of the four principles. In this way the United States Supreme Court “set the standard that a punishment would be cruel and unusual [,if] it was too severe for the crime, [if] it was arbitrary, if it offended society’s sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty.”

Peña Nieto calls off visit to White House after confrontational call with Trump

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has called off an official trip to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump after a tense phone call brought the two leaders to a policy-driven standstill.

Peña Nieto was tentatively planning the trip for March, a White House official said, but the official confirmed to CNN that the trip was put on hold following the phone call, which took place on February 20.

According to The Washington Post, which first reported the cancellation, officials from both countries told the paper that Peña Nieto “called off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall.”

A White House official told CNN that any meeting would be awkward and counterproductive given Trump’s vow that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The official said the call was “less hostile” than the one that occurred between the two leaders a year ago, but “no more productive” than that call either.

At least one Mexican official, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, said Trump “lost his temper.” US officials described the President as being “frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall.”

According to the Post’s report, the two leaders “devoted a considerable portion” of this year’s call to discussing the wall.

According to the paper, officials from both countries confirmed that Peña Nieto’s “desire to avoid public embarrassment — and Trump’s unwillingness to provide that assurance — that proved to be the dealbreaker.”

[CNN]

Trump Misquotes Fox News Anchor to Slam ‘Total Phony’ Schiff: He ‘Omitted and Distorted Key Facts’

In a botched attempt to use information from Fox News to attack the Democrat’s rebuttal to the infamous GOP memo, President Donald Trump removed numerous words from a quote by one of the network’s anchors to paint Rep. Adam Schiff as “a total phony.”

After spending his Saturday night on Twitter slamming the Democrat’s claims that the FBI and DOJ did not inappropriately target Trump and his allies, the president picked up a quote from Fox News — falsely claiming the network’s anchor said “Congressman Schiff omitted and distorted key facts.”

“‘Congressman Schiff omitted and distorted key facts’ @FoxNews So, what else is new. He is a total phony!” Tweeted Trump.

However, the actual quote from the Fox News report went as follows:

“Congressman Schiff, he argues the Republican memo omitted and distorted key facts — it was initially meant to be mislead the public. And this Democratic memo was supposed to be the rebuttal that was meant to show what was left out. Was the Democratic memo released now, will it be seen as a success? Did they get their point across?”

The irony of Trump misquoting a Fox News anchor to accuse Schiff of omitting and distorting facts was first noticed by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter.

[Mediaite]

Trump Campaign Uses Photo of Parkland Shooting Survivor in Email Asking For Donations

On Saturday, President Donald Trump‘s reelection campaign sent an email soliciting donations — and in that email was a photo of the president visiting a Parkland, FL shooting survivor.

“The nation has turned its attention to the senseless school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Trump is taking steps toward banning gun bump stocks and strengthening background checks for gun purchasers,” the email — first reported by CNN — reads. “The President has made his intent very clear: ‘making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority.’”

A little further down, the email links to the campaign’s donations page.

The photo was also publicized on the president’s Instagram, but it did not accompany a plea for money:

Pictured in the photo is Madeleine Wilford, 17, who was shot four times by shooter Nikolas Cruz. Surrounding her are the president, the first lady, and her family.

[Mediaite]

‘I just don’t know what that means’: Trump gets completely lost during meeting on school shootings

President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to get completely lost during a discussion on preventing school shootings being held at the White House.

During the talk, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill talked about active measures that schools can take during shootings that can go into effect automatically without the police even being on the scene.

“We also have countermeasures that can be employed by the sheriff’s department within seconds to contain the attacker and in a sense turn the attack on them,” Hill said. “That is a critical piece.”

A confused Trump asked him to explain the concept of countermeasures.

“I just don’t know what that means,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know what that means.”

Hill proceeded to give him an example to illustrate it.

“If you are in a hallway, with an active shooter in a hall, and he’s going around looking for targets, you got the doors locked, and somebody is monitoring and, for example, they have smoke canisters that can come in and blind to shooter, which distracts them,” he said. “That gives time and, you know, that critical time when he is allowed looking for targets.”

Trump still didn’t seem to understand the concept, however.

“In the meantime, he’s shooting everybody, though,” the president said.

“Well, in this particular school, they’re locked down,” Hill patiently explained.

[RawStory]

Media

Donald Trump Boldly Suggests Movies, Video Games Should Get a “Rating System”

In a Thursday meeting to discuss school safety in the wake of the Parkland shooting, Donald Trump suggested that movies and video games are influencing the youth’s perception of violence—and because of that, there should be a “rating system” in place, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He did not acknowledge the fact that explicit ratings systems for movies and video games have existed for decades.

“We have to look at the Internet, because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed. And we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it,” Trump said. “And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence in video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And then you go the further step and that’s the movies. You see these movies, they’re so violent and yet a kid is able to see a movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved. Maybe they have to put a rating system for that.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Domestic Policy Council Director Andrew Bremberg, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and adviser Kellyanne Conway also attended the meeting Thursday, in addition to local officials.

His puzzling call for a ratings system aside, Trump echoed a common debate that is often stirred up after mass school shootings, one that places the blame on pop culture. As T.H.R. points out, he’s far from the first politician to voice concerns over violent video games. In the past week, Republican Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and Republican Rhode Island Representative Robert “Bobby” Nardolillo mentioned video games, with the latter proposing a tax on games rated “M” for mature or above. (Because, again: the games already get ratings based on their violent content.) Back in 2005, even Hillary Clinton spoke out against increasingly violent games, saying they are “stealing the innocence from our children” and should be monitored like “tobacco, alcohol, and pornography.”

The vocal students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the Parkland shooting occurred, do not agree. Rather than blaming violent video games and films, they have instead made waves by calling out inactive politicians and the N.R.A. In a stirring Wednesday night town hall meeting hosted by CNN, the students—as well as parents, teachers, and other locals—took Senator Marco Rubio and N.R.A. spokeswoman Dana Loesch to task, demanding gun-control reform. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed in the shooting, told Rubio outright that both his comments, as well as Trump’s comments, have been “pathetically weak.”

[Vanity Fair]

Trump says armed school officer in Parkland didn’t ‘love the children’

President Donald Trump continued to criticize the armed school resource officer in Parkland, Florida, who stayed outside of the school during the shooting, saying during a White House news conference conference that Scot Peterson “doesn’t love the children, probably doesn’t know the children.”

The comments tie into Trump’s push to arm some educators, including teachers, to deter school shootings. Trump has argued that officers outside the school don’t care about the students the same way teachers do.

“We need offensive capability and we are going to be doing something about it,” Trump said.

He added that it is “very, very important that we have offensive capability, as well as defensive capability, within the schools. You really are inviting people to come in and do whatever” without arming educators.

The armed school resource deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School waited outside the school building as the shooting unfolded last week, officials said earlier this week. Peterson never went in after taking a position on the west side of the building, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference.

Peterson resigned after he was suspended without pay by Israel pending an internal investigation into his actions during the shooting that left 17 people dead, Israel said. Peterson was eligible for retirement.

Trump has seized on the story, slamming Peterson by name in an attempt to prove that more people inside schools needs to be armed in case of a shooting.
Trump told reporters earlier on Friday that Peterson “certainly did a poor job” and was a “coward.”

“He trained his whole life,” Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House. “But when it came time to get in there and do something he didn’t have the courage or something happened. But he certainly did a poor job. There’s no question about that.”

The Peterson story, however, undercuts Trump’s point that an armed official with gun training could have stopped the deadly shooting. Scott was armed and failed to do so.

Trump, asked during his news conference for specific proposals he would push on guns after the Florida shooting, listed improving background checks, getting rid of bump stocks and thwarting the mentally ill from buying weapons.

One thing Trump did not mention: Raising the age limit to buy certain types of weapons, something he has previously proposed. The NRA is against any change to age limits for buying weapons.

Trump also said that he talked to House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday morning and mentioned speaking to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

[CNN]

Trump hits CNN as ‘fake news’ over Florida student’s claim network gave him scripted question

President Trump went after CNN over a Florida school shooting survivor’s claim that he didn’t participate in a CNN town hall because the network wouldn’t let him ask his original question and replaced it with a scripted one.

“Just like so much of CNN, Fake News. That’s why their ratings are so bad! MSNBC may be worse,” Trump tweeted Thursday.

CNN quickly replied to Trump’s tweet, reiterating its past denial of the student’s account.

“There is absolutely no truth to this story — and we can prove that. CNN did not provide or script questions for anyone in last night’s town hall, nor have we ever. Those are the facts,” the network tweeted at the president.

Trump appeared to have been responding to a segment on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” featuring the student, who reiterated his previous claims.

Colton Haab, a survivor of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school last week, said earlier Thursday that CNN had initially asked him to “write a speech and ask questions” for the town hall but that the event “ended up being all scripted.”

He said his question was about using veterans as armed security guards at schools.

“I expected to be able to ask my questions and give my opinion on my questions,” Haab said.

“I don’t think that it’s going get anything accomplished,” he added. “It’s not gonna ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have.”

CNN disputed Haab’s account.

“There is absolutely no truth to this,” Richard Hudock, CNN’s senior manager of public relations, said in a statement provided to The Hill. “CNN did not provide or script questions for anyone in last night’s town hall, nor have we ever.”

“After seeing an interview with Colton Haab, we invited him to participate in our town hall along with other students and administrators from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” Hudock said. “Colton’s father withdrew his name from participation before the forum began, which we regretted but respected.”

Trump has repeatedly attacked CNN and other networks, including MSNBC, since his presidential campaign and into his administration.

[The Hill]

 

 

 

Trump insists on arming teachers despite lack of evidence it would stop shootings

In the past 24 hours, Donald Trump has thrice backed a plan to arm teachers in US schools despite the lack of evidence showing this would end school shootings.

Facing opposition from the country’s largest teachers’ unions, school security guards and military veterans, the president continued to endorse the plan in White House meetings and on Twitter.

“I want my schools protected just like I want my banks protected,” Trump said Thursday morning in a meeting about school safety at the White House.

In the Thursday meeting, the president suggested offering bonuses to teachers who are trained to carry concealed weapons.

“If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly,” Trump said at a Wednesday night listening session with loved ones of people killed in mass shootings.

There are few examples available of armed citizens stopping mass shootings and it is difficult to track, in part because it is difficult to know what a gunman was planning before they were stopped.

A 2014 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) study of US active shooter incidents in the US between 2000 and 2013 said of the 160 total incidents examined, 21 were stopped by citizens, workers or off-duty police officers. Of the 21 people, six were armed.

An active shooter incident is defined as a shooting that occurs in a confined, populated area and in which law enforcement or citizens could affect the outcome based on their response. Shootings related to gang violence, accidents and suicides were not included in the tally.

The majority of the 160 incidents, 56.3%, were ended by the shooter before police arrived. Either the shooter committed suicide, stopped shooting or fled the scene. “The FBI recognizes that seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result,” the study concluded.

Trump’s suggestion to arm teachers was immediately opposed by the nation’s largest teachers’ unions – the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – as well as the teachers’ union in Florida’s Broward County, where last week’s shooting took place.

Individual teachers criticized Trump’s suggestion on social media under the #ArmMeWith campaign. There, teachers asked that the money that would be needed to fulfill Trump’s plan instead be used to improve schools resources such as mental health services and basic classroom supplies.

A former assistant principal who stopped a shooting at a high school in Mississippi while armed told the New York Times the experience left him with nightmares and acute stress for six months afterward.

“It doesn’t matter what a pistolero you are, or think you are,” Joel Myrick said. “You don’t need to be in school in charge of protecting children.”

The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), the nation’s largest school policing group, also said it opposed arming teachers. They noted law enforcement officers responding to an incident may mistake armed personnel not in uniform as the assailant. They also emphasized how law enforcement officers receive ongoing practice in high-stress and difficult shooting environments.

At the Wednesday listening session, Trump also described a situation where there would simply be more armed people on campus – not just teachers.

“They may be Marines that left the Marines, left the Army, left the Air Force,” Trump said. “And they’re very adept at doing that. You’d have a lot of them, and they’d be spread evenly throughout the school.”

Veterans disputed this claim on Twitter.

Jay Kirell, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, said it was “extremely difficult” to shoot under stress. “Cops & soldiers literally get paid to do this & most of them can’t shoot accurately under stress,” Kirell tweeted.

Daniel Riley, an infantryman in the Marines who attended Columbine high school, guessed how many Marines would have been needed to prevent students being killed at his alma mater during the 1999 attack.

“Using my knowledge of both, my guess on what it would take to prevent kids from being killed on 4/20/99: at least 20 Armed Marines (And it’s still a maybe),” Riley said. “And that’s somehow ‘common sense’?”

Trump’s proposal ignores the efficacy of gun laws in other countries where there are far fewer incidents of gun violence.

[The Guardian]

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