Elaina Plott at The Atlantic writes—Trump’s Phone Calls With Wayne LaPierre Reveal NRA’s Influence:
Three days after a pair of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas that left 31 people dead, President Donald Trump was preoccupied with visions of a Rose Garden ceremony.
His daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, had proposed the idea of a televised Rose Garden appearance as a way to nudge her father toward supporting universal background checks. The president had recently suggested he was open to the gun-control measure, tweeting, “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform.” To be sure, this was similar to how he’d responded to other mass shootings during his 31-month presidency, and each time, the push for action fizzled. But the prospect of a Rose Garden ceremony, his daughter thought, where Trump could sign a document and call it “historic” and “unprecedented”—and receive positive media attention—might be the best chance of yielding real change.
For a moment, it looked like it just might work. “He loved it. He was all spun up about it,” said a former senior White House official who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity in order to share private conversations. 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. [...}
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—What “compassion” means to Bush:
Hey everyone, check out Bush's definition of "compassion".
Apparently, it means talking to black people.
(Thanks to reader K.Y. for catching this "disturbing trend".)
Update: From Lis in the message boards:
Looking at further photo albums on the site makes it more clear how anomalous the Compassion section is.
But the only non-whites in 15 Homeland Security images and 16 National Security are Powell and Rice, and I think there's one African American park ranger off to the side in one photo of the 16 on the Environment.
In contrast, of 20 photos illustrating Compassion, 17 prominently show non-Caucasians; the other three are solo photos of Bush, but two of those are before the National Urban League and in front a map of Africa.
And RonK emailed to remind that Slate's Will Saletan noted a short while back that when Duhbya calls somebody "gifted", "He doesn't mean exceptional. He means ethnic."
Saletan provides chapter and verse re blacks, Iraqis, Palestinians, Hispanics, Chinese, Russians, Irish, Cubans, and South Koreans.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Another day away from the mic? Well, as always, life happens! Here's how it went on 8/22/18: The Manafort conviction! The Cohen allocution! The Hunter indictment! The Buchanan allegations! Greg Dworkin and Armando helped us cover it all.