Empty Words, Loaded Guns

Parkland Tragedy:  On Thursday morning Trump tweeted his initial thoughts about Wednesday’s tragedy, laying the blame for the Parkland shooting rampage on neighbors and classmates who he said “should have reported the Parkland shooter to authorities after he first exhibited disturbing behavior.”  Trump did not mention guns.  Later in the morning, reading from a prepared script, he spoke in flat emotionless tones that betrayed his lack of empathy and his problem  showing compassion.  Again, he failed to mention the word gun once, focusing on the killer’s history of erratic behavior and mental illness. Trump, who generally has no problem veering from prepared words and displaying emotion when the subject at hand involves Islamic terrorism, kneeling football players or treacherous Democrats, couldn’t muster any emotion this time. His failure to mention guns wasn’t all that surprising, after all he owes the NRA considerable gratitude, they fueled his campaign with $21 million, a portion of which was donated directly to his campaign with the rest used to blast Hillary for her support of gun control.  As to his comments on the killer’s obvious mental health issues, they too fell flat not because mental illness didn’t play a part in the senseless tragedy but because just one year ago Trump signed a bill repealing a rule the Obama administration put in place after Sandy Hook that prevented people receiving Social Security benefits for mental disabilities from purchasing guns and because Trump’s budget calls for across the board cuts in mental health services.  Trump is scheduled to head to Mar a Lago for the weekend and now plans to allocate some of his weekend golf time together with another slot that had been allocated to a trip to Orlando towards a visit to Parkland, although if he’s been watching any of the news, or at least the news that’s not on Fox, he might realize that the people in Parkland aren’t likely to be all that welcoming and are unlikely to be satisfied by just another somber prayer.  He may want to reroute back to Disney World.  The families and students, and even the Broward County sheriff, have all been speaking out with raw emotion, calling for an end to senseless gun violence, and they, unlike Trump, realize that the gun part is significant and needs to be addressed.  Governor Scott, another recipient of NRA largesse is also trying to appear concerned and compassionate, his skills in that area exceed Trump’s, however, despite his statement that some kind of screening process might be suitable to prevent those with mental illness from buying guns, his willingness to actually do anything about guns is doubtful.  As to the Florida Senate, its members aren’t all that satisfied with Florida’s already liberal gun purchase laws, they had been planning a committee hearing on a bill to loosen background checks for gun purchases, but have postponed it, at least until the press cycle shifts to another story. As far as the weapon that was used to kill the Parkland victims, it was a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle, legally purchased by the murderer last February, at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs; with no criminal record, he cleared an instant background check via the FBI criminal database because everyone, even severely disturbed individuals, needs at least one semi-automatic rifle.

              

Immigration No Go:  So far nothing good has come out of the Senate debate on immigration reform.  Yesterday, several versions of immigration legislation were put up for a vote, with none of them receiving the required sixty vote plurality.  Trump’s preferred plan, the one that included his desired four part immigration framework, fared the worst going down by a vote of 39-60. The Trump plan lost 14 Republican votes but did receive support from three vulnerable red state Democrats, West Virginia’s Manchin, Indiana’s Donnelly and North Dakota’s Heitkamp.  Unfortunately, the best competing bipartisan plan also failed by a smaller margin, going down 54-45, in part because the White House together with the Department of Homeland Security campaigned furiously against it.  Eight Republicans joined all but three of the Democrats in supporting the bipartisan proposal, a plan that would have provided 1.8 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship while spending $25 billion on the stupid wall. Three Democrats, including California’s Kamala Harris and New Mexico’s two senators, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, voted against the bipartisan plan because they thought that it conceded too much to Trump, however they didn’t cast their no votes until it was obvious that the plan would fail anyway.  At this point some are saying that the Senate process is over, although it probably isn’t completely dead yet. For her part Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has been in hiding since lying so much about the Porter affair, emerged to tweet attack Democrats for not being serious about resolving the DACA problem that Trump caused.   Although the March deadline for DACA is around the corner, for now it’s being held up in the courts so the actual deadline probably extends for a few more months, maybe until the end of the year.  The House is expected to vote on something soon too, but in all likelihood the House approach will mirror Trump’s and will be dead in the water in the unlikely event that it passes and makes it to the Senate.      

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Former Trump strategist and erstwhile BFF Steve Bannon finally returned to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday. He didn’t say very much, limiting his answers to monosyllabic grunts. Following directions provided by the White House he was only permitted to respond to twenty five questions all of which had been drafted by the White House and agreed to by the Nunes wing of the intelligence committee. The questions had been engineered to prompt single word “no” answers. Even some of the Republican members of the committee were outraged by the constraints imposed on his testimony.  Republican Representative Conaway, the committee’s supposed leader except when Nunes jumps in, is considering consulting Speaker Ryan about issuing some kind of contempt citation.  No doubt, Ryan will be extremely cooperative. Ha!  One indication of the absurdity of the process is that Bannon is represented by the same lawyer who represents White House Counsel Don McGahn, the man who crafted the questions that the committee was allowed to ask. Fortunately, a few other people have been able to speak with and question Bannon.  He recently spent twenty hours with Special Counsel Mueller and his interrogators, and they were not subjected to any White House restrictions.  Mueller and his crowd have been busy.  Expectations are that the already indicted Rick Gates, who worked on the Trump campaign for longer than his partner, former campaign head Paul Manafort, is getting closer to formalizing his plea agreement with Mueller, we may learn more next week. At this point, it’s unknown whether Gates “turn” will be more of a problem for Trump or Manafort.  However, expectations are that anything that makes things worse for Manafort will eventually make things worse for Trump.