Conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt broke with several members of a CNN panel who were praising President Obama’s performance at a town hall event Thursday evening on gun control. He accused the commander in chief of being unable to answer tough questions on his support for Australia-style confiscatory measures.
“[CNN’s] Anderson Cooper asked a very important question: Why do you keep bringing up Australia where guns were confiscated?” Hewitt said during the panel discussion. “He can’t answer a direct question! Did it drive you crazy that he cannot answer a question?”
Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney brushed off the question, assuring his fellow panel members that the president has never – nor would he ever – support a total ban on firearms like the one imposed in Australia in 1996.
Hewitt’s fellow conservative panelist, commentator S.E. Cupp, begged to differ.
“But [Obama] did call for an assault weapons ban in 2013,” she said, “that legislation went to the floor [of the United States Senate].”
“But if [Obama’s] capable of (and interested in) banning an entire category, not just of rifles, but also handguns that fit into that ban, why is it a conspiracy that I think he wants to ban some guns?” she asked. “I’m simply taking him at his word.”
Earlier in the evening, during the town hall event, Obama scoffed when Cooper asked him to respond to concerns that the White House has an invested interest in eventually confiscating guns. The president laughed and called it a “conspiracy theory.”
