Columnist takes down NRA's Wayne LaPierre and Dana Loesch for CPAC speech: 'Why not say that facing those students?'

During a Thursday interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called out the NRA's Wayne LaPierre and Dana Loesch as nothing more than cowards.

During the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, Loesch stated outright that the media "loves" mass shootings.

"Now, I'm not saying that you love the tragedy, but I am saying that you love the ratings," she told the CPAC audience, to cheers. "Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back."

Friedman was appall.

"It's disgusting," he told Blitzer. "Just disgusting."

"It's hard to believe she can say something like that, whether you're on the left or the right, to say, to suggest that the legacy media loves mass shootings, crying white mothers, because of ratings," Blitzer said.

"What a courageous woman," Friedman said sarcastically. "Why not say that last night when you were facing those students? You go before a hyper-conservative convention and say that? Wayne, what a tough guy, what a tough guy, to be able to give that message to super conservatives, not stare those parents in the face, what a -- it's just disgusting, Wolf."

Blitzer agreed going on to say it was amazing she would smear journalists covering the story and giving a voice to those harmed by the tragedy.

"What it shows you, Wolf, they're out of arguments," Friedman continued. "And all they can do is deflect on the honest situation, which was the vast majority of Americans do not want to eliminate the Second Amendment. They don't want to take away guns from people that want to hunt, use them for marksmanship, or protect themselves. They want to make sure that people who do that have -- that it is controlled in a way that people use them in these kinds of mass shootings or reduce the option for that, and as I said, countries that do that, the example of Japan, have massive reduction in gun violence."

Blitzer went on to ask Friedman if the NRA has too much of a stranglehold on Washington. "One party has completely sold their soul to them. That's what the Republican Party has done."

Watch the conversation below: