That didn't take long. Just one day after Ivanka Trump whispered sweet nothings in Daddy's ear and got him to agree that maybe background checks might be a good idea if, and only if, he could have a big fancy Rose Garden signing ceremony, the deal is off.
Why? Because Trump called to ask Wayne "I need a $5 million dollar house" La Pierre if it was okay if he had a big shindig in the Rose Garden and signed a background check bill into law.
The Atlantic reports:
On August 7, the president picked up the phone to discuss the idea with Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “It’s going to be great, Wayne,” Trump said, according to both a former senior White House official and an NRA official briefed on the call. “They will love us.” And if they—meaning the roughly 5 million people who make up the NRA’s active membership, and some of Trump’s electoral base—didn’t, Trump reportedly assured LaPierre, “I’ll give you cover.” (The White House did not return a request for comment for this story.)
“Wayne’s listening to that and thinking, Uh, no, Mr. President, we give you cover,” the former senior White House official said in describing the conversation. The president reportedly asked LaPierre whether the NRA was willing to give in at all on background checks. LaPierre’s response, the sources said, was unequivocal: “No.” With that, “the Rose Garden fantasy,” as the NRA official described it to me, was scrapped as quickly as it had been dreamed up.
In fairness, the NRA, Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are more or less what Trump can count on as his base. And despite all of the troubles the NRA has had, Trump cannot afford to alienate President LaPierre when his re-election is on such shaky ground. So just to cement the pact, Trump called President LaPierre today to confirm that there will be no background checks.
Earlier this afternoon, according to a person briefed on the call, the president told LaPierre in another phone call that universal background checks were off the table. “He was cementing his stance that we already have background checks and that he’s not waffling on this anymore,” the source told me. “He doesn’t want to pursue it.” In the call, the source added, Trump said he wanted to focus now on “increasing funding” for mental-health care and directing attorneys general across the country to start prosecuting “gun crime” through federal firearms charges from the Justice Department.
Let the American Carnage continue, says Toady Trump.
