Don’t call it a flip flop—Donald Trump has done something much more extreme. Trump has executed an Olympic halfpipe run worth of shifting positions on guns over the past 24 to 48 hours.
In a Wednesday meeting with members of Congress, Trump forgot the November mass shooting in Texas; blamed former President Obama for not supporting background checks and for causing background check legislation to fail because he did support it; advocated taking people’s guns without due process; embraced some key Democratic positions, including saying he was open to an assault weapons ban; told Republicans to stop pushing for concealed carry reciprocity; and, of course, insulted many of the members of Congress in attendance, Republicans definitely not excepted. So how does he follow that up?
Presumably he’s forgotten most of what he himself said and what positions he embraced, and his staff prevailed on him to send out a “balanced” tweet trying to make it seem like there’s something coherent in his position. The end result, though, is that he’s still spewing word salad. The dressing is just a lot less zingy today.