Manuel Oliver, father of slain Parkland student Joaquin Oliver, unloaded on gun-loving Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz in a Thursday appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, saying the congressman was "a salesperson" for a wall that wouldn't have stopped "the American white dude" who killed his son.
"The reason why I call [Gaetz] a salesperson is because he's selling a project that has no relationship at all to what the discussion was about," Oliver said. "This person came in here trying to solve the problem with the argument that we need a wall. We're discussing about gun violence in this room and how are we going to end with this epidemic."
Oliver added that "it was very offensive"that Gaetz and his Republican colleagues seem to believe a wall will "be the solution for all our problems."
"And then he pointed at me like that," he went on. "You don't point at me like that. And then he tried to get me out of the room. And you don't do that. You don't get me out of any room. I'll get you out of that room as soon as I have the chance to vote for someone else."
"How do you deal with something as irrational as that coming from an elected official?" contributor Mike Barnicle asked Oliver.
"Well, it's not only irrational. It's wrong. But it's also a big contradiction coming from them," he replied, saying Republican obsession with a wall showed the party wasn't really concerned about guns deaths or immigration. "The contradiction is yes, we want to save lives. But wait a minute the wall will save 4,000. What about the other 40,000?" And he took aim at the GOP's anti-immigrant rhetoric as a parting shot.
"You know who's an immigrant? I'm an immigrant," he said. "My son came from Venezuela, I was trying to find a safer life in here. He got shot by an American white dude."
"So what's the answer for that?" Oliver added. "If I don't get it from them, they will get it from me."
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