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Inside Politics

Trump on Gun Reforms; NRA Pushes Back. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 22, 2018 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:08] DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Dana Bash, in for John King.

President Trump meets today with Florida officials to talk school safety after sending a half dozen tweets this morning promoting his ideas for preventing another school shooting.

And Senator Marco Rubio faced tough questions, and unlike many politicians these days, answered them during CNN's town hall with families of those who lost loved ones in Parkland.

And today the NRA chief is sending a shot across the bow to Republicans, like President Trump and Marco Rubio, who are endorsing policies that the gun lobby opposes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WAYNE LAPIERRE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: The elites don't care not one wit about America's school system and school children. If they truly cared, what they would do is they would protect them. For them, it's not a safety issue, it's a political issue. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And we are waiting to hear from President Trump, who is meeting, as we speak, with state and local officials on school safety. We will bring you that as soon as we have it.

But when high school students began to rally, to march and demand change after their friends and family were murdered by a gunman last week, we said, this feels different. Well, today, it is different. A Republican president, someone the National Rifle Association spent more than $30 million to help elect, is endorsing some more restrictive gun laws, stronger background checks, raising the age to buy an assault weapon. A Republican senator at the NRA spent more than $3 million in 2016 to elect in Florida to doing the same. So today is different, which is why the NRA chief this morning gave an even more fiery speech than usual at an annual conservative gathering, intended to fire up the NRA's 5 million members to reach out to Republican officials and warn them against those stronger gun laws.

That after the president put forth his gun control proposals in a series of tweets. He said -- including in this tweet, he said, I will be strongly pushing comprehensive background checks with an emphasis on mental health, raising age to 21 and end sale of bump stocks. Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue, I hope.

Yet he was always careful to reaffirm his support for the NRA, tweeting a short time later, quote, what many people do not understand or don't want to understand is that Wayne, meaning Wayne LaPierre, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the NRA are great people and great American patriots. They love our country and will do the right thing. Make America great again.

Here with me to share their reporting and insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, "The Weekly Standard's" Michael Warren, Catherine Lucey of the "Associated Press," and CNN's own Phil Mattingly.

Thank you so much, all of you.

Again, we mentioned that we are waiting to hear from the president.

But let's just start with this being a new day. And I'm, you know, taking the approach that we are hearing things that we haven't heard from Republicans on guns in a very long time. It could change or, more importantly, it could go nowhere. But what are you hearing from your sources on The Hill?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think people are in a wait and see mode right now. And I think that's why when people like Senator Rubio say what he said last night on a number of different areas, people, obviously, stand up and pay attention to it because we haven't seen significant movement or any movement, really, on the Republican side of things, particularly people like Senator Marco Rubio, throughout for course of the last 10 or 20 years.

But I also think it's important to note, and you need to distinguish between what Wayne LaPierre is saying and what the conferences in the Republican Senate and Republican House actually believe. And that is that they came up with this as their belief system. That they ideologically believe that the Second Amendment is a right and they don't want to do anything to infringe upon that. And when that is your baseline, not just because the NRA says something, but because this is what they believe and this is, more importantly, what their constituents believe --

BASH: Exactly.

MATTINGLY: And why they get reelected and why they are in Congress in the first place. It, I think, leads one to be a little skeptical of anything happening right now.

And I think -- and I've been saying this for a couple of days now, the wildcard is the president. The president is backed by the NRA. The president who rally after rally after rally made so clear his pro-gun stance. If he is serious about various proposals, then perhaps that makes something happen on Capitol Hill. But I also think it's important to note that 240 characters does not a proposal make.

BASH: Right.

MATTINGLY: What does extensive background checks mean? What does bump stocks mean beyond trying to have you administration do something to it? And raising the age, which the NRA already opposes, and a lot of Republican lawmakers that I've already spoken to are completely against, what do all these things mean going forward? What do the proposals actually look like? That will entail whether or not something can actually happen.

[12:05:09] MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR WRITER, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Dana, I would push back a little bit that -- that everything has changed in the last couple of days. You have seen over the last couple of years some Republicans, not as many as Democrats or gun -- gun rights sort of restrictionists would like to see, but they have been moving a little bit more toward some kind of restrictions.

You saw Pat Toomey endorse a background check bill. John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican senator, endorsed a bill just a few months ago, a co-sponsored bill. I think what you are seeing is more Republicans come on board as -- as one horrific event happens after another.

You also have a president who, despite the NRA giving, you know, having so much backing and really having so much invested in this president, who's not really an NRA guy.

BASH: No.

WARREN: You know, 18 years ago he was endorsing the assault weapons ban. He's a New York Democrat who is only recently became a Republican. He's much more, I think, on the side of, let's do something, whether it's stricter background checks, let's do some changes. He's not a doctrinator on this issue as maybe the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, would like him to be.

BASH: No, you're exactly right. And I agree with you that there has been a slow shift. But it has -- nothing's changed in terms of legislation. They almost got there with the Toomey-Manchin bill after Newtown, but it didn't' go anywhere.

WARREN: But I would point out just one more thing, Dana.

BASH: Yes.

WARREN: That 16 Democrats in the Senate voted against that bill.

BASH: Absolutely.

WARREN: Nine of those Democrats are still in the Senate. Now, I think maybe the Democratic Party has changed a little bit, but it would be a good question to ask, you know, these Democrats what they --

BASH: No, you're exactly right. This is -- this tends to be a regional issue more than a party issue. It's just that these days the region that Republicans come from are more concerned.

WARREN: That's right.

BASH: Yes.

Abby, I want you to weigh in, in this. You spend your day at the White House following what happens with the president. Again, we are waiting to hear what kind of conversation the president is having right now with state and local lawmakers and elected officials.

But I want to turn back to what happened in the White House, in the state dining room yesterday. There was so many powerful moments, but there was one that really stood out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And this would only be, obviously, for people that are very adept at handling a gun. And it would be -- it's called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They'd go for special training. And they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, that was obviously the president talking about concealed carry, which we are going to talk about in a moment.

But here's the sound bite that I was talking about, a grieving father talking about what it's like to lose his daughter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW POLLACK, DAUGHTER KILLED IN STONEMAN DOUGLAS SHOOTING: We're here because my daughter has no voice. She was murdered last week. And she was taken from us. Shot nine times on the third floor. We, as a country, failed our children. This shouldn't happen. We go to the airport. I can't get on a plane with a bottled water, but we leave it that some animal can go into a school and shoot our children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Abby, what are you hearing from your White House sources about how that affected the president?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think it's -- it was affecting to everybody, and particularly the president. It's been interesting to watch him in that kind of environment. There was a lot made of the notes that he had on a piece of paper, sort of outlining the steps of empathy. But I think that what ended up happening in that room was that the president was, according to the aides that I spoke to, very affected by it, very deeply affected by it.

And you see it publicly in his language. He called the gunman a sicko. It's the kind of language that he uses when he just can't understand the depravity of the person who would do that.

And a White House aide told me that it moved him so much, it reminded them of the moments right before -- right after Bashar al Assad used chemical weapons in Syria and the president was watching the images of the children on television and he was stricken by it and felt like he needed to do something.

They feel like they're kind of in a mindset like that right now. But the problem is that there are a lot -- it's not just a single-handed thing that the president can do right now. He has to rally a lot of support. And it's still unclear whether that's going to be possible. I think there's a possibility here that the president is voicing some support for these changes, but like with immigration, when push comes to shove, it has been hard to get to a compromise on immigration, and it will be just as difficult, if not more difficult on guns.

BASH: Because the base fights back.

PHILLIP: Because the base fights back.

BASH: Effectively saying wait, wait, wait --

PHILLIP: And the NRA is (INAUDIBLE) this morning.

[12:10:02] BASH: Yes. exactly.

But I want to turn to -- so you talked about, Abby, the fact that there are -- this desire to do something. Of course the open question is, what is that something? We've talked about some of the issues that could get support, certainly from across the aisle, whether it's raising the age on assault weapons, a ban to being able to get that -- excuse me, on assault weapons and broadening the background checks.

There was something else that he talked about, which we played in that sound bite, which is arming teachers, which is incredibly controversial. Even in the White House Q&A that he had, two of the parents who lost children at Newtown, one of whom has a wife who is a teacher, said, oh, no, that's a terrible idea, Mr. President. But he's not backing away from it on Twitter this morning.

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": No, it was incredible in the room yesterday. You actually saw also a moment with two of the students really having a debate in real time. You were seeing sort of a live, national conversation about how to deal with this.

This is something the president has talked about before on the campaign trail. It's not a new idea from him. And he -- and he talked about it pretty vigorously today on Twitter. So while, on the one hand, we're seeing him talk about, you know, the idea of an age limit, raising the age limit for buying certain weapons, talking about strengthening background checks, he is also looking at -- looking at a very different measure. So there's wildly different ideas he's throwing out. And he actually polled the people in the room basically at that -- in that moment --

BASH: That was remarkable.

LUCEY: Just to see -- to see what kind of reaction he'd get. PHILLIP: And the things -- just quickly. The things that he tweeted

about this morning when he said, it's an average of three minutes. That's how long these shootings take. And then eight to -- eight minutes for first responders to show up. That's something that came up in the listening session yesterday.

BASH: Yes.

PHILLIP: And he remembered it, repeated it on social media. So he's drawn to this idea, and it's reinforced by the things that he's hearing.

BASH: And I just want to add, I was talking about the tweets. I want to just show you one of them on this subject.

I never said give teachers guns, like was stated on fake news CNN and NBC. What I was -- what I said was to look at the possibility of giving concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience. Only the best 20 percent of teachers a lot would now be able to immediately fire back.

And, as you said, he mentioned that term sicko. If a savage sicko came to a school -- and he went on to say that he believes that that would mean that the attacks would end.

I should also note that back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton went after him for suggesting putting guns in the classroom, he said that that was not true, crooked Hillary said I want guns brought into the classroom. Wrong. And that was May 21, 2016.

Things are changing and he is now saying, well, I never said I want guns in all classrooms. But even what he is suggesting, evening it to only the best, whatever that means, 20 percent of teachers, is something that is highly controversial.

WARREN: It's something Marco Rubio said last night he did not support.

BASH: Exactly.

WARREN: I actually want to make a quick correction. I misspoke. I said that 16 Democrats voted. What they actually voted against was the reauthorization of an assault weapons ban in 2013.

BASH: Yes.

WARREN: I just want to be clear that that -- I made that mistake.

BASH: Thank you. Noted. Thank you.

WARREN: All right.

BASH: OK, everybody stand by.

Up next, the NRA, as we were talking about, is pushing back big time after last night's CNN town hall with the families of Florida shooting victims. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA LOESCH, NRA SPOKESWOMAN: And we will not be gas-lighted into thinking that we are responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[12:17:37] BASH: Welcome back.

We are expecting to hear from President Trump. He is meeting, at this time, with state officials on school safety. And, again, we're going to bring that to you as soon as we get it, as soon as it is over and we see the tape.

But already this morning we are seeing a push from the president to make background checks more strict and talk about raising the legal buying age of assault weapons. From an ally of the gun lobby in the Senate, we've seen a change in thinking as well. From Democrats, modest praise from -- for their counterparts. And they're seemingly -- seeming willingness to act. From the NRA, insistence that the outcry after this action, after last week's massacre at a Florida high school is not really about safety, but it's a ploy, they say, to infringe on your rights.

Wayne LaPierre says, yes, what happened last week was horrible. He wishes it never happened and certainly wouldn't happen again. But this message is also to the group's 5 million members, the tragedy is being exploited.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WAYNE LAPIERRE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: What they want are more restrictions on the law-abiding. Think about that. Their solution is to make you, all of you, less free. They want to sweep right under the carpet the failure of school security, the failure of family, the failure of America's mental health system. And even the unbelievable failure of the FBI.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, let's just start there. The NRA going after the FBI? Have you ever heard that before?

PHILLIP: And it wasn't -- it wasn't just about Parkland. In fact, it probably wasn't really about Parkland at all. That's what I thought was so interesting about Wayne LaPierre veering into this territory of attacking law enforcement. It was also about the Russia dossier. That seemed to be very much directed at President Trump, trying to say, we're on your side --

BASH: We've got your back.

PHILLIP: On all of this stuff. And the FBI isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Maybe not in Parkland, but also not when it comes to the Russia investigation. It was extraordinary.

BASH: It was. So a message -- many messages to President Trump, to Republicans who, as you said, their constituents, many of their constituents are single issue voters voting on gun rights. But also directly to those constituents. Here's one example of Wayne LaPierre talking about -- warning about a runaway train.

[12:20:11] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WAYNE LAPIERRE, CEO AND EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: Here's something we must be careful of as we go forward. We all have to be careful that this doesn't become a runaway train. What if all of your medical records, perhaps your conversations with your doctor, your prescription information, do we really want all that on a government list and in the government database? I even heard a television pundit recently suggesting that people seeking to buy a firearm should be interviewed first. I mean, interviewed first?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Look, it's strategic. It's strategic. And he's saying what they believe. Not that -- not that they think that people are going to make lists and socialism is going to take over the country, but that it's a slippery slope or it's a camel's nose under the tent or allowing anything to move in the direction that would regulate or restrict gun rights is just the start of a domino effect, right?

The most instructive thing in covering gun debates that I think I ever witnessed was shortly after Sandy Hook I went in. I had a meeting with some top Republican staffers with the assumption that something was going to give, right? Somebody was going to have to agree. They were going to have to move off where they were to some degree. Just politically it wasn't tenable to stay where they were. That -- two of those aides had just gotten off a conference call with the NRA who made very clear they will get nothing. They have -- they had plenty of proposals, whether it's arming individuals in schools, whether it's on mental health, whether it's on even supporting Senator Cornyn and Senator Murphy's background bill, which is an incentive bill, not an expansion bill.

But when it comes to giving a little bit or coming across to the middle or trying to reach agreement with Democrats who want stricter gun laws, they have learned and they have decided strategically, there is no benefit to them for that. You just have to look back to the assault weapons ban and kind of the lessons learned on that. And that's what you saw today. And anybody who thought that they were going to take any type of a different tone wasn't paying attention five years ago at Sandy Hook. They are the front facing, they are the outward facing of this fight. They will take the lumps. They know they're going to get hit on it. But they feel if they give an inch, they can lose entirely.

BASH: That's true. And obviously a large part of it is about guns. But they are also appealing to very real concerns among a lot of these constituencies who are very rabid, avid voters in the conservative base about government overreach. And that's what that runaway train was about. And that's very real. It's not just about guns, it's about big, bad government getting into your lives, knowing about what you do in your life because of these background checks.

MATTINGLY: To put it bluntly, there's a reason the strategy works.

BASH: Yes.

MATTINGLY: There's a reason it's been effective. It's because that's what the 5 million or however many of those are single issue voters who really believe that this is actually happening. They vote and they believe the government overreach is real and the concerns about it are very effective strategically.

LUCEY: And the thing that's interesting in this moment, the thing that's different than, say, with Sandy Hook is that you have this activist student movement that's emerged in the past week who are articulate and passionate and marching on state capitols and are coming to Washington. And I guess the question now is, does that move the ball at all? Is that going to be a sustained thing that changes anything? And that's what we're waiting to see, I think.

WARREN: I think that something that occurred in the town hall last night is something that goes to exactly what the NRA members and the NRA itself are concerned about. Marco Rubio at one point said, look, if you're going to want to do this, you're going to have to go down the road of banning all semiautomatic weapons. And the crowd cheered. I think there is a real and genuine concern among gun owners that that's where this is going.

It's a weird moment, I think, in this debate where both sides, you know, gun rights advocates and gun restrictionists, seem to be talking past each other. The gun rights folks are really concerned about liberty. The gun restrictionists are really concerned about security. And, of course, what are we doing in government and in politics is trying to figure out the balance between those two.

BASH: Exactly.

WARREN: And neither seems to be sort of willing to understand, well, maybe give a little on this, give a little on that and we can be a little bit happier and a little bit safer and a little bit more secure in our liberty. That's where everyone seems to be talking past.

BASH: You know, after the NRA chief gave his big speech this morning, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, tweeted the president a bit -- more than a bit -- in a statement and said the following, remember, the president is pushing for actions on things, including comprehensive background checks that the NRA opposes. The last time he showed support for sensible gun reform, no fly, no buy, he quickly dropped his support once the NRA opposed it. I hope this time will be different.

I'm going to translate that. He's basically saying, man up, Mr. President.

PHILLIP: Yes, put your money where your mouth is. I mean I think that is a real issue, is whether the president is actually going to go forward and do what it takes to get some of this stuff from -- from words, to legislation, to what have you.

[12:25:06] And, you know, I don't know. I really don't know. The president has often told people what they want to hear at any particular moment. And he indicated today by tweeting about Wayne LaPierre just before he showed up on that stage that he is focused on it, he's paying attention, he's trying to see where the political wins are, and where his gut tells him to go, I think, is anybody's guess. I think even folks in the White House are not quite sure where he's going to end up.

BASH: Yes, political winds and his gut --

PHILLIP: Yes.

BASH: Sometimes are at odds and sometimes they're not. It just depends.

Before we take a break and we're going to talk more about last night's remarkable town hall on CNN, I want to play one more thing that Wayne LaPierre said this morning about the belief that he has, and he believes other gun owners have, about where gun rights come from.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WAYNE LAPIERRE, CEO AND EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: The brilliance of America, of our country itself, is that all of our freedoms in this country are for every single citizen. And there is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive. It's not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Granted by God? Gun rights? Does that -- granted by God? I mean, look, there are a lot of people who believe that, but there are also a lot of people who believe that it is also your right to not be mowed down by somebody.

PHILLIP: Right.

BASH: There was --

PHILLIP: We talked about this last night. A mother who said, what about my son's right to life, liberty and the pursuit to happiness? Are those two things not on equal plane? I think this is maybe one of the central debates that we're having here is, which right is more important? I think a lot of Democrats and some of these folks in Parkland are saying, we deserve to live, we deserve to live in safe communities, and the NRA is saying, well, you know, you can't take away our guns.

BASH: And the key question, to your point is whether you can have both rights simultaneously, and there should be a way for the grown-ups to get in a room and figure it out.

LUCEY: And you saw that play out in the White House yesterday. We had one father saying, this is terrible, but it's not about guns right now. And you had a student saying, I can't believe that someone could buy this kind of weapon.

BASH: Exactly.

All right, everybody stand by. We're going to talk more, up next, about Senator Marco Rubio, who tried to walk the tightrope last night on his position of what kind of guns Americans can buy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: You start looking at how easy it is to get around it, you would literally have to ban every semiautomatic rifle that's sold in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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