Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on March 12.
Another day, another dizzying new round of gun control suggestions from President Trump. On Wednesday afternoon, the president hosted a conference at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss legislation to prevent future school shootings. The event evoked a roundtable similar to the meeting Trump hosted on immigration last month. And as then, the president seemed more than happy to accept any proposal the Democrats threw at him.
Trump made immediate headlines during the meeting when he smacked down Vice President Mike Pence, who had been talking about the importance of preserving due process when discussing confiscating weapons from people thought to be unstable.
“Or, Mike, take the firearms first and then go to court,” Trump cut in. “To go to court would have taken a long time. You could do exactly what you’re saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second.”
It was a shocking comment from the man who moments prior had proclaimed himself “the biggest fan of the Second Amendment,” and one which seemed to miss entirely the point Pence was making: If citizens indeed have a constitutional right to bear arms, then the government must prove them unfit to exercise that right before restricting it.
And Trump was just getting warmed up. Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey plugged their universal background checks proposal, which failed to pass the Senate in 2013; then-minority leader Mitch McConnell panned it as “a clear overreach that will predominantly punish and harass our neighbors, friends, and family.”
Trump’s response: “If we use that as a base, you could add some of the things that are going to be said in the room . . . I think it would be a positive thing in terms of background checks.”
Later, Sen. Dianne Feinstein went even further, complaining to Trump that “you can go into a store and you can buy an AR-15.”
“That’s what you’ll have to discuss. You’ll have to discuss it,” Trump replied. “I believe it has to be very strong. I would rather have you come down on the strong side.”
Trump nodding along with Democrats during a meeting is one thing, and the White House pushing out explicit policy proposals is another. The smart money says that this meeting will produce the same results as its counterpart on immigration last month: Over the next few days, Trump’s aides will ply him with Republican arguments for why he should oppose the Democratic ideas he embraced in the meeting. And he’ll go back to tweeting about armed guards in schools.
One More Thing—No gun bill can pass the Senate without 60 votes and there’s little indication Republicans are itching to follow Trump into the breach on this one. My colleague Haley Byrd tracked down a gaggle of GOP senators following the meeting, all of whom distanced themselves from Trump’s comments:
More Bad Headlines for Jared Kushner—“Kushner’s Business Got Loans After White House Meetings,” New York Times
One White House departure we certainly didn’t see coming: Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s longest-serving and most-trusted advisers, announced Wednesday she would be leaving the White House in the coming weeks.
“There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to President Trump,” Hicks said in a statement. “I wish the president and his administration the very best as he continues to lead our country.”
Axios’ Jonathan Swan summed up Hicks’s departure best: “Trump will miss her in the same way he misses former bodyguard Keith Schiller. Hicks is family and has been part of his routine for nearly three years now. Trump increasingly finds himself working in a building populated by people he doesn’t know and doesn’t trust; some of whom did not even vote for him.”
Photo of the Day:
Donald Trump touches the casket of Billy Graham as he lies in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda February 28, 2018.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Is Jeff Sessions on his way out again? President Trump lashed out unexpectedly against his attorney general Wednesday morning, accusing Sessions of doing too little to investigate the “potentially massive FISA abuse” that Trump believes kickstarted the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency.
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2018
Trump’s public comments come a day after Sessions pledged that the Justice Department would look into the FISA abuses that House Republicans have alleged took place against Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 campaign.
Apparently, Sessions had finally had enough, and he released a statement in response: “As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.”
We know that Sessions, an early Trump ally whom the president soured on last year, has come close to quitting before over Trump’s online abuse: former chief of staff Reince Priebus has said he once chased Sessions into the West Wing parking lot to talk him into staying. Sessions loves his job, so it’s possible he’s come to terms with the fact that the occasional nasty browbeating from Trump is just the price of admission. But Wednesday’s statement demonstrates that Sessions hasn’t grown insensate to the repeated humiliations.
Must-Read of the Day: In the latest Politico magazine, National Review’s Rich Lowry discusses how Jeff Sessions has become the most hated man in the kind of administration he always dreamed of serving in:
Song of the Day—“We Used To Be Friends,” The Dandy Warhols
