Trump wants guns in classrooms, except when he doesn’t

My much-maligned friend Donald Trump finds himself in hot water lately for expressing his firmly held belief that guns should sometimes maybe but not always sort of be allowed, possibly, in school classrooms.

I honestly don’t understand the confusion, but let me unspool the events as they occurred over the past few days.

On Friday, speaking at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that he, as president, would do away with all gun-free zones. Schools are, of course, gun-free zones, and Trump had said on a previous occasion, “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools.”

After the NRA speech, Hillary Clinton called Trump out for saying he would allow guns in classrooms, which are rooms that exist in schools.

An outraged Trump tweeted: “Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom. Wrong!”

Wrong indeed. How dare Clinton try to put words in Trump’s mouth, especially words that had already come out of his mouth and clearly had no desire to go back in there.

To clear things up, Trump went on Fox News on Sunday and said this:

“I don’t want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms. … Things that are going on in our schools are unbelievable. You look at some of our schools, unbelievable what’s going on. But I’m not advocating guns in classrooms. But remember, in some cases, and a lot of people have made this case, teachers should be able to have guns. Trained teachers should be able to have guns.”

How much clearer can the man be? He doesn’t want guns in classrooms, Clinton is a liar for saying so, but he does think there should be guns in classrooms, but he’s not advocating for them, but he thinks they should be there. Duh. I feel Trump’s pain because I too have been a victim of the Clinton lie machine.

It all started Sunday night when Clinton tweeted the following statement: “Rex Huppke wants to allow teachers to have facts in classrooms.”

I know she tweeted that because I retweeted it on my Twitter timeline with the attached phrase, “Hey, this is NOT true!!”

Some may claim — correctly, perhaps — that Clinton never actually tweeted that comment and that I just dummied up a fake tweet using her @HillaryClinton user name. While that may be true, it is absolutely not true — I would never do such a thing, though I would say that in certain cases doing such a thing is OK and I might do it.

Anyway, I responded to Clinton’s scurrilous claim by sending this tweet: “Crooked Hillary said that I want facts brought into the school classroom. Wrong!”

I then tweet-released the following statement:

“I don’t want to have facts in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have facts in classrooms. Things that are going on in our schools are unbelievable. You look at some of our schools, unbelievable what’s going on. But I’m not advocating facts in classrooms. But remember, in some cases and a lot of people have made this case, teachers should be able to have facts. Trained teachers should be able to have facts.”

So now I suppose you’re thinking: Doesn’t that mean you want teachers to have facts in the classroom? Yes! No! Maybe? What does it matter? These are all just words, meaningless arrangements of letters. And what are letters? They’re just symbols representing sounds, and what is sound but noise, and what is noise but a hassle?

Rex Huppke can be reached at rhuppke@tribune.com or follow him on Twitter @RexHuppke