Survivors lash out at Trump
Students plan marches, vow to pressure lawmakers
Students who escaped the deadly school shooting in Florida have focused their anger at President Donald Trump, contending that his response to the attack has been needlessly divisive.
“You’re the President. You’re supposed to bring this nation together, not divide us,” said David Hogg, a 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press. “How dare you,” he added.
Hogg was responding to Trump’s tweet on Sunday that Democrats hadn’t passed any gun control measures during the brief time they controlled Congress with a supermajority in the Senate. Trump also alluded to the FBI’s failure to act on tips that the suspect was dangerous, while bemoaning the bureau’s focus on Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
The students are organising marches and rallies in Washington and other major US cities on March 24 — called March For Our Lives — to demand action on gun violence.
Meanwhile, organisers behind the Women’s March, an anti-Trump and female empowerment protest, called for a 17-minute, nationwide walkout by teachers and students on March 14, while the Network for Public Education, an advocacy organisation for public schools, announced a day of walkouts, sit-ins and other events on school campuses on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado that left 12 students and one teacher dead.
Trump was at his Florida estate yesterday but did not mention the attack in a series of tweets. After more than a day of criticism from the students, the White House said the President would hold a “listening session” with unspecified students on Thursday and meet with state and local security officials on Friday.
Florida politicians, meanwhile, scrambled to produce legislation in response to Thursday’s attack that killed 17 people. Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old who had been expelled from the school, is being held without bail in the Broward County Jail, accused of 17 counts of first-degree murder.
In a TV interview, Republican Senator Marco Rubio embraced a Democratic bill in the Florida legislature to allow courts to temporarily prevent people from having guns if they are determined to be a threat to themselves or others. Governor Rick Scott, also a Republican, attended a prayer vigil a few blocks from the shooting site. He was expected to announce a legislative package with GOP leaders of the legislature this week.
Emma Gonzalez, another student who survived the attack, cited Trump, Rubio and Scott by name in a warning to politicians who are supported by the National Rifle Association.
“Now is the time to get on the right side of this, because this is not something that we are going to let sweep under the carpet,” she said on Meet the Press.
The students’ pointed comments are the latest signs of increased pressure for gun control after the massacre.
The students have vowed to become the face of a movement for tighter firearm regulations. As well as the events on March 24, they plan to visit the state capitol in Tallahassee this week to demand immediate action.
School and government records obtained yesterday show Cruz was diagnosed as developmentally delayed at age 3 and had disciplinary issues dating to middle school. In February 2014, while in 8th grade, Cruz was transferred to a special school for children with emotional and behavioral issues. He stayed there until 10th grade, when he was transferred to Stoneman Douglas. A month after arriving, Cruz was written up for using profanity. Last year, Cruz was expelled.
On September 28, 2016, an investigator from the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) visited Cruz and his mother, Lynda Cruz, after he posted a video on Snapchat showing him cutting himself. The report showed that Cruz had written a racial epithet against AfricanAmericans and a Nazi symbol on his book bag, which his mother had forced him to erase. The investigator said Cruz was suffering from depression and on medication and had told Lynda Cruz he planned to buy a gun, but she couldn’t determine why.
A school counsellor told the investigator that Lynda Cruz had always tried to help her son and followed through on his therapy and medication, but the counsellor was concerned about the youth’s desire to buy a gun.
A crisis counsellor told the DCF investigator he had visited the school and that he did not believe Cruz was a danger to himself or others. The case was closed.
After Lynda Cruz died in November, Cruz moved into the home of a teenage friend. The friend’s parents told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper they had no idea the extent of Cruz’s issues.
“We had this monster living under our roof and we didn’t know,” Kimberly Snead told the newspaper in an interview published yesterday.
He kept the AR-15 he allegedly used in the massacre locked in a gun safe with a few other firearms. James Snead thought he had the only key to the cabinet but says Cruz must have had another key.
They told Cruz he needed to ask permission to take out the guns. He had asked only twice since November. They said “yes” once and “no” once.
On Thursday, Cruz told them he didn’t need a ride to school: “It’s Valentine’s Day and I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day,” he said.
Cruz sent their son a few texts that day. In one, he asked what classroom the boy was in. He said he was going to see a movie.
Later he texted he had “something important” he wanted to tell the teen. Then he wrote: “Nothing man.”— AP
Now is the time to get on the right side of this, because this is not something that we are going to let sweep under the carpet. Emma Gonzalez
As the nation mourned, United States President Donald Trump kept largely silent about the Florida school shooting victims and the escalating gun control debate, instead raging at the FBI for what he perceived to be a fixation on the Russia investigation at the cost of failing to deter the attack.
From the privacy of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump vented about the investigation in a marathon series of tweets over the weekend. He said yesterday that “they are laughing their asses off in Moscow” at the lingering fallout from the Kremlin’s election interference and that the Obama Administration bears some blame for the meddling.
Trump was last seen publicly on Saturday when he visited the Florida community reeling from a school shooting that left 17 dead and gave rise to a student-led push for more gun control. White House aides advised the President against golfing so soon after the tragedy, so Trump spent much of the holiday weekend watching cable television news and grousing to club members and advisers.
Trump met yesterday with Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, discussing immigration, taxes, infrastructure and the Florida shooting, the White House said.
Amid a growing call for action on guns, the White House said yesterday that the President would host a “listening session” with students and teachers this week, but offered no details on who would attend or what would be discussed.
With survivors of Thursday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, planning a march on Washington on March 24 to pressure politicians to take action on gun violence, some lawmakers said
it would take a powerful movement to motivate Congress.
“I am not optimistic that until there is real action by the American public to demand change in Congress that we’re going to see real action to confront gun violence out of this Congress,” Democratic Chris Coons said on Face the Nation.
Throughout the weekend, the President’s mind remained on Russia after an indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller on Saturday charged 13 Russians with a plot to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump viewed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s declaration that the indictment doesn’t show that any American knowingly participated as proof of his innocence and is deeply frustrated that the media are still suggesting that his campaign may have colluded with Russian officials, according to a person who spoke to the President but is not authorised to publicly discuss private conversations.
He has fumed to associates at Mara-Lago that the media “won’t let it go” and will do everything to delegitimise his presidency. He made those complaints to members who stopped by his table Sunday as he dined with his two adult sons and TV personality Geraldo Rivera.
Initially pleased with the Justice Department’s statement, Trump has since griped that Rosenstein did not go far enough in declaring that he was cleared of wrongdoing, and grew angry when his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, gave credence to the notion that Russia’s meddling affected the election, the person said.
Trump’s frustration bubbled over on Twitter, where he stressed that the Russian effort began before he declared his candidacy, asserted that the Obama Administration bears some blame for the election meddling and insisted he never denied that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 US campaign.
James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, said on CNN’s
State of the Union that the President was not focusing on the bigger threat.
“Above all this rhetoric here, again, we’re losing sight of, what is it we’re going to do about the threat posed by the Russians? And he never — he never talks about that,” said Clapper. “It’s all about himself, collusion or not.”
Trump tweeted about the nation’s “heavy heart” in the wake of the shooting and noted the “incredible people” he met on his visit to the community. But he also sought to use the shooting to criticise the nation’s leading law enforcement agency.
Trump said on Sunday that the FBI “missed all of the many signals” sent by the suspect and argued that agents are “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign”. The FBI received a tip last month that the man now charged in the school shooting had a “desire to kill” and access to guns and could be plotting an attack. But the agency said on Saturday that agents failed to investigate.