‘Donald Trump and the NRA have met their match’: Nicolle Wallace explains ‘savvy’ students have changed gun control debate
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace wondered if "savvy" activism by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting massacre survivors could potentially mark a turning point for the gun control debate in America.
"One thing he can do for all of these kids turned activists, is to say, 'I'm going to ask my allies in the media and online to stop smearing you, to stop accusing you of being actors, to stop calling calling this a hoax.' These are people that also -- what they have in common, the people smearing the students from Parkland, Florida, with his base ,is that they're his supporters," Wallace noted. "These are some of the same voices that echoed his messages."
"It is highly unlikely Donald Trump would ever do that because I, quite frankly, think showed historic restraint he hasn't lashed out at the children himself yet for their direct targeting of him," explained Time magazine columnist Elise Jordan. "He has on so many other occasions attacked anyone who attacks him, literally a pregnant widow."
"I feel a daily struggle for this White House staff to impress upon the president how he cannot just use the power of his office to hammer into these young children who just experienced great trauma," Jordan, who served in the George W. Bush White House, continued.
"I want to add, we are at the point we're saying it shows restraint that president doesn't attack high school kids after a shooting," noted Dr. Jason Jones, the politics editor of The Root. "That's where we are as a country."
"I watch these students all day long and this doesn't look like the gun debate in America, this doesn't look like post-Columbine, this tragedy doesn't look like post-Newtown," Wallace noted. "This looks like the #MeToo movement, this looks like the Women's March."
"This looks like something bigger, and these activists, these are television and Twitter savvy warriors, these student activists fighting for common sense gun reforms, I think Donald Trump and the NRA have met their match. Am I watching too much TV?" Wallace asked.
"No, I think it's a significant movement, Nicolle," answered Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. "I think so for this reason: a lot of these members of Congress have fired an AR-15 and they've heard the loud sound of that weapon while firing it, but most of them haven't been on the receiving end of that sound, hearing live rounds being fired at them like these kids have, and so I think we have a generation of kids in this country who, frankly, feel hunted."
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