You could almost see steam coming out of Chris Jansing's ears, and she is not having any of Trump's bull this morning.
"There is a lot to unpack there. Let me just mention briefly that he was defending his China policy. Right now the Dow is down about 530 points. That's over 2%. But to the point, he is going to Dayton. There you see now 577. He's going to Dayton, he's going to El Paso. Something that has reignited the conversation about guns in this country, but he is echoing what we have heard for so long from many Republicans and the NRA that this is a mental health problem, this is not a gun problem," said Jansing.
"I want to just make note as a fact check of a few things that the president had to say. He said, his critics are 'people who want to score political points and as much as possible I've been trying to stay out of it.' All you have to do is look at his twitter feed, including overnight, where he attacked Beto O'Rourke who is at home in El Paso, trying to talk to the people in that community and comfort them. He says he's tried to tone it down, tried to stay out of it. Look at his twitter feed. Look what he just said about Joe Biden. That is categorically untrue.
"He says he's going to do something beyond anything that's been done so far. Well, let's go back to Bill Clinton and let's look at the assault weapons ban, something that was then repealed. Now all of a sudden, that's not on the table. He says there is 'no appetite.' There is no appetite to ban large-capacity magazines, and then a minute or two later, he says he's going to be convincing people to do things that they don't want to do. So why is he talking about whether or not Congress has the will to do something and then saying he can convince people to do something that they don't want to do -- it's -- Victoria DeFrancesco is still with us. We also have members of our panel, Jim Kessler, Susan Del Percio. Victoria, I'll let you add on to that."
"Certainly after the tragedy in El Paso, the president tweeted out that we should link immigration to gun control. malice the epitome of making it political. Then in terms of whether there is an appetite or not an appetite, I think both Republicans and Democrats could agree that if President Trump wants something to move, he's going to pick up the phone, he's going to call Mitch McConnell, and Mitch McConnell will say, yes, sir, we'll do it. He really doesn't have a conundrum on his hands, he just needs to pick up the phone," DeFrancesco said.
"He has not picked up the phone to Mitch McConnell and said, get the Senate back here. The House (bill) has been passed. All we need is for you to vote on it. There are Republicans who said this could probably pass," Jansing said.
The panelists spelled out all the things Trump could do, including banning high-capacity magazines.
Jim Kessler, Schumer's former policy director, wasn't optimistic.
"I have seen this before. I have seen how it has played before. What will happen is there will be a universal background check bill that Republicans will be able to support, Mitch McConnell can support, it will have all sorts of loopholes and poison pills in there. The thing that needs to happen, it needs to be the Manchin Toomey bill or the bill that passed in the House. The NRA is not the organization it once was, that's for sure. But it knows how to play this game.
"And it's gonna will delay for a long time. And it will put things in the bill that only if you really understand the gun issue will you realize how damaging those pieces are. So we have got to make sure this is not a phony universal background check bill. If you know, the president does indeed twist arms and tries to get something done."
