DON’S GUNS A-BLAZING
Slams Dems on 2nd Amendment & immigs in fiery speech
President Trump gave a rousing, campaign-style speech at a gathering of conservatives Friday, warning the adoring crowd that Democrats would repeal the Second Amendment and cancel his tax cuts if they regained power.
“Don’t be complacent. If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn’t believe, they’ll take away your Second Amendment,” Trump said at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in the DC suburb of Oxon Hill, Md.
“They will do that, they will do that,” he said.
Don’t be complacent. If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn’t believe, they’ll take away your Second Amendment. — on Democrats We salute our great American flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, and we all proudly stand for the national anthem.
With the crowd supportive from the start, the president tossed his prepared speech.
“By the way, you don’t mind if I go off script a little bit because, you know, it’s sort of boring,” he said. “It’s a little boring. Got this beautiful speech, everything is wonderful but a little boring.”
Trump then touched on familiar themes in the 75-minute address, slamming “crooked” Hillary Clinton, pushing his plan to arm teachers and build a border wall and predicting Republicans would “clobber” Democrats in the midterms if “everybody gets off their ass, and they work” for the GOP.
“It is a natural instinct. You
A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened. — on the Florida school shooter With your help, we have put more great conservative ideas into use than perhaps ever before in American history. — on his conservative record
just won, and now, you’re happy and complacent. Don’t be complacent. We have to get out there, and we have to fight in ’18 like never before,” he said.
Amid raucous chants of “Lock her up,” “Build the wall,” and “USA, USA,” the president riffed on a number of favored topics:
His plan to arm qualified teachers and other campus staffers to prevent school shootings like the one in Parkland, Fla., that left 14 students and three staffers dead.
The appointments of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and other conservative judges.
The dangers of illegal immigration and need to build a border wall.
Democrats’ refusal to cut a deal on immigration
His disdain for the “horrible” news media.
Trump doubled down on his proposal to arm teachers and other staffers so they could shoot back in an attack — and said that if a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland had been armed, the gunman would have been stopped.
“A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened,” Trump said.
“Why do we protect our airports and our banks, our government buildings, but not our schools? When we declare our schools to be gun-free zones, it just puts our students in far more danger,” Trump declared.
“Well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches and people that work in those buildings, people that were in the Marines for 20 years, and retired, people in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, people that are adept with weaponry, and with guns,” he said.
Teachers, he argued, love their students and so would be better motivated to protect them than an armed security guard.
He also patted himself on the back for his judicial appointments and other achievements.
“For the last year, with your help, we have put more great conservative ideas into use than perhaps ever before in American history. I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative,” he said, adding that he “had the most successful first year in the history of the presidency.”
And Trump slammed illegal immigrants by reciting the lyrics of a 1963 song “The Snake,” which tells the story of a woman who rescues a snake and nurses it back to health only to have it fatally strike her.
“Don’t worry, you’re getting the wall,” he added.
And he accused Democrats of not wanting to help Dreamers, or immigrants illegally brought to the US as children. The lawmakers, he said, “abandoned” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which had shielded Dreamers from deportation but was scrapped by Trump.
He also ripped the news media, referring to journalists covering the event as “all those horrible people back there.”
“They are going to support me. You know why? Because if somebody else won, their ratings would go down, they would all be out of business,” he said.
He took a swipe at NFL players who knelt during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
“We salute our great American flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, and we all proudly stand for the national anthem,” he told the cheering crowd.