The Gun Debate

Let’s just say it. This is a pathetic cave:

Earlier this afternoon, according to a person briefed on the call, the president told LaPierre in another phone call that universal background checks were off the table. “He was cementing his stance that we already have background checks and that he’s not waffling on this anymore,” the source told me. “He doesn’t want to pursue it.” In the call, the source added, Trump said he wanted to focus now on “increasing funding” for mental health care and directing attorneys general across the country to start prosecuting “gun crime” through…

The Atlantic has background and details RIGHT HERE.

This is Just Crazy

And really frightening. Two stories about the 2020 elections and media you need to read.

First, from NBC NEWS. Behind the Facebook-fueled Raise of the Epoch Times

Then, from The Washington Post. The Trump Chaos Machine

How’s Your Night?

Sam Stein (@samstein): A White House official admits to us, Trump has lost whatever interest he had in doing gun control.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-goes-dark-on-gun-control-after-pledging-background-checks-like-weve-never-had-before

With @swin24 and @sambrodey

Sam Stein (@samstein): @swin24 @sambrodey “There is nothing happening,” one Senate Democratic aide, who asked to be referred to as a “severely depressed staffer who has been through too many of these,” said of the current state of negotiations. “This is all Trump. It is all in his hands.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-goes-dark-on-gun-control-after-pledging-background-checks-like-weve-never-had-before

Your Monday Smackdown

But, but, but…Trump saw it on FOX News! What’s not to believe?

HERE’S THE FULL ANALYSIS?

Blasting Baltimore

The Presdent does it. For all the wrong reasons.

President Donald Trump launched a multiday Twitter tirade last month directed at U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, sharing video footage of derelict Baltimore neighborhoods and asking why the Democratic congressman wasn’t doing more to address the “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” in his district. Though Trump didn’t say so, some of the responsibility for any such conditions rests with his own administration. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has ultimate oversight of nearly 35,000 public housing and federally subsidized rental units in the city, many of which suffer from the squalor the president decried on social media. HUD has known for years of failing conditions in many of them but hasn’t…

CLICK HERE to read ProPublica’s full story.

Our Tactful President

Not the time. Not the place.

The mayor of El Paso said after he corrected President Trump about crime statistics in his city, the president called him a “RINO,” a pejorative nickname that means “Republican in Name Only.” Mayor Dee Margo told PBS’s “Frontline” in an interview published Wednesday that Trump made those comments in a private conversation they had while the president was in El Paso last week to pay respects after a mass shooting that killed 22 people and injured dozens more. ”He said, ‘You’re a RINO,’ and I said, ‘No sir, I’m not a RINO, I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by our attorney general, and that’s all I did’,” Margo recounted. Earlier this year, Margo, who…

Unbelievable. CLICK HERE to read The Washington Post reporting.

The Steve King Comment

There are times (like now) that I’m glad we moved from my native Iowa. Thank you, Steve King:

And HERE are some examples of President Trump NOT criticizing King over the years.