my ci can worry about it,ine. or do something about it. garlique® helps maintain healthy cholesterol naturally. and it's odor free. and pharmacist recommended. garlique.® welcome to "inside politics." i'm dana bash in for john king. president trump meets today with florida officials to talk school safety after sending a half dozen tweets this morning promoting his ideas for preventing another school shooting. and senator marco rubio faced tough questions, and unlike many politicians these days, answered them during cnn's town hall with families of those who lost loved ones in parkland. and today the nra chief is sending a shot across the bow to republicans like president trump and marco rubio who are endorsing policies that the gun lobby opposes.

>> the elites don't care not one wit about america's school system and school children. if they truly cared, what they would do is they would protect them. for them, it's not a safety issue, it's a political issue. their goal is to eliminate the second amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms. >> we are waiting to hear from president trump who is meeting as we speak with state and local officials on school safety. we will bring you that as soon as we have it. but when high school students began to rally, to march and demand change after their friends and family were murdered by a gunman last week, we said, this feels different. well, today it is different. a republican president, someone the national rifle association spent more than $30 million to

help elect, is endorsing some more restrictive gun laws. stronger background checks, raising the age to buy an assault weapon. a republican senator at the nra spent more than $3 million in 2016 in florida to do the same. but today is different. which is why the nra chief this morning gave an even more fiery speech than usual intend to go fire up the nra's 5 million members to reach out to public officials and warn them against those stronger gun laws. that after the president put forth his gun control proposals in a series of tweets. he said -- including in this tweet, he said, i will be strongly pushing comprehensive background checks with an emphasis on mental health, raising age to 21 and end sale of bump stocks. congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue, i hope. yet he was always careful to

reaffirm his support for the nra tweeting a short time later, quote, what many people do not understand or don't want to understand is that wayne, meaning wayne lapierre, chris and folks who work so hard at the nra are great people and great american patriots. they love our question and wico do the right thing. make america great again. here with me, michael warren, kathy lucy of the associated press and frcnn's own phil mattingly. welcome and thank you very much. we are waiting for the president. let us start that this is a new day. i'm taking the approach we are hearing things from republicans that we haven't heard on guns in a long time. it could change, and more importantly, it could go nowhere. where do you think our sources are on the hill? >> i think it's a wait and see right now on the hill.

people obviously stand up and pay attention to it because we haven't seen significant movement noor any movement, really, on the republican side of things, particularly marco rubio, for the last 20 years. you need to distinguish between what wayne lapierre is saying and what the congress and republican senate and republican house actually believe. and that is that they came up with this as their belief system, that they idealogically believe that the second amendment is a right and they don't want to do anything to infringe upon that. when that is your baseline, not just because the nra says something but because this is what they believe and this is, more importantly, what their constituents believe and why they get reelected and why they're in congress in the first place, i think it leads one to be skeptical of anything happening right now. the wild card is the president. the president is backed by the nra. the president who rally after rally after rally made so clear his pro-gun stance. if he is serious about various proposals, then perhaps that

makes something happen on capitol hill. but i think it's also important to note that 240 characters does not a proposal make. what does bump stocks mean? raising the age for ar-15s mayor m may or may not happen. >> you have seen republicans change a little bit, not as much as gun restriction people would like to see, but they have moved toward enforcing a background check bill. a co-sponsored bill was released just a couple months ago. i think you'll see more republicans come on board after one horrific thing happens after another. you also have a president who,

despite the nra giving so much backing and having so much invest ed in this president, is not really an nra guy. 14 years ago he was endorsing the assault weapons ban. he's really a democrat, only recently became a republican. he's on the side of let's do stricter background checks, let's make some changes. he's not a doctrinator of the nra as much as people think he is. >> i agree with you there's been a slow switch. they almost got somewhere after the newtown shooting, but it got nowhere. >> 26 senators voted against that bill. nine of those democrats are still in the senate. i think the democratic party has changed a little bit, but it would be a good question to ask of these democrats. >> you're right, this tends to be a regional issue more than a party issue, it's just that

these days the region that republicans come from are more concerned. abby, i want you to weigh in on this. you spend your day at the white house following what happens with the president. again, we are waiting to hear what kind of conversation the president is having right now with state and local lawmakers and elected officials, but i want to turn back to what happened in the white house, in the state dining room yesterday. there was so many powerful moments, but there was one that really stood out. >> this would only be, obviously, for people that are very adept at handling a gun. and it would be -- it's called concealed carry where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. they would go for special training, and they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone. >> that was obviously the president talking about concealed carry, which we are going to talk about in a moment, but here's the sound bite that i was talking about, a grieving

father talking about what it's like to lose his daughter. >> because my daughter has no voice, she was murdered last week and she was taken from us. shot nine times on the third floor. we as a country failed our children. this shouldn't happen. we go to the airport, i can't get on a plane with a bottled water but we leave it that some animal can go into a school and shoot our children. >> abby, what are you hearing from white house sources how that affected the president? >> it was affecting to everyone, particularly the president, but interesting to watch him in that kind of environment. there was a lot made of the notes he had on a piece of paper, sort of outlining the steps of empathy.

but i think that what ended up happening in that room was that the president was, according to the aides that i spoke to, very affected by it, very deeply affected by t. yit. you see it publicly in his language. he called the gunman a sicko. he uses words like that when he can't understand the depravity of people who would do that. the white house said it moved him so much, it reminded them of when assad used chemical weapons in syria and the president was watching the images of children on television and he was stricken by it and felt like he needed to do something. they feel like they're kind of in a mindset like that right now, but the problem is that there are a lot -- it's not just a single-handed thing that the president can do right now. he has to rally a lot of support, and it's still unclear whether that's going to be possible. i think there is a possibility here that the president is voicing some support for these changes, but like with immigration, when push comes to

shove, it has been hard to get to a compromise on immigration, and it will be just as difficult, if not more difficult, on guns. >> because the base fights back. >> because the base fights back. >> i want to turn to -- you talked about after the fact that there's a desire to do something. the open question is what is that something? we've talked about some of the issues that could get support, certainly, from across the aisle rk aisle, whether it's raising the age on assault weapons and broadening the background checks. there was something else that he talked about, which we played in that sound bite, which is arming teachers, which is incredibly controversial, even in the white house q and a that he had. two of the parents who lost children at newtown, one of whom has a wife who is a teacher said, oh, no, that's a terrible idea, mr. president. but he's not backing away from

it on twitter this morning. >> it was incredible in the room yesterday, you actually saw a moment between two students having a debate in realtime. you saw a live, natural conversation about how to deal with this. this is something the president has talked about before on the campaign trail. it's ain't new idea from hinot . he talked about it pretty extensively on twitter. on one hand we're talking about raising the age limits on certain weapons, talking about extending background checks, and he's also talking wild measures. he actually polled people in the room at that moment to see what kind of reaction he would get. >> quickly, the things that he tweeted about this morning when he said it's an average of three minutes, that's how long these shootings take, and then eight minutes for first responders to show up. that's something that came up in the listening session yesterday. he remembered it, repeated it on social media, so he's drawn to

this idea and it's reinforce bid wh -- reinforced by what he's hearing. >> he said, i never said give teachers gun, like what was stated on nbc and cnbc. what i said was talking about giving concealed guns to adept teachers with plenty of experience. only 15% right now would be able to fire back. if a savage sicko came to a school -- and he went on to say that he believes the attacks would end. i should also note that back in 2016 when hillary clinton went after him for suggesting putting guns in the classroom, he said that that was not true, crooked hillary said i want guns brought into the classroom. wrong, and that was may 21,

2016. things are changing and he said, i never suggested guns in the classroom, but even 20% of teachers having them is highly controversial. >> and marco rubio said he did not support that. i want to make a quick correction. i said 16 democrats voted. what they actually voted against was the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban in 2013. i just want to be clear that i made that mistake. >> noted. thank you. everybody stand by. up next, the nra as we were talking about is pushing back big time after last night's cnn town hall with families of florida shooting victims. >> and we will not be gaslighted into thinking that we are responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with.

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we will clcome back. we are expecting to hear from president trump. he is meeting with school

officials about school safety. we'll get that to you when it's over and we see the tape. right now the president is talking about making background checks more strict and raising the age of buying assault weapons. we see change among the republicans, for the democrats, their seeming willingness to act. and the nra, they say it's not really about safety, but it's a ploy, they say, to infringe on your rights. wayne lapierre says, yes, what happened last week was horrible. he hopes it never happened and would certainly nefertiver happ again, but this message is to the group's 5 million members. the tragedy is being exploited. >> what they want are more restrictions on the law-abiding. think about that.

their solution is to make you, all of you, less free. they want to sweep right under the carpet the failure of school security, the failure of family, the failure of america's mental health system. and even the unbelievable failure of the fbi. >> let's just start there. the nra going after the fbi? have you ever heard that before? >> it wasn't just about parkland. in fact, it probably wasn't really about parkland at all. that's what i thought was so interesting about wayne lapierre veering into this territory of attacking law enforcement. it was also about the russia dossier. that seemed to be very much about president trump saying we're on your side about all this stuff and the fbi isn't doing what they're supposed to

be doing. maybe not in parkland but also about the russia investigation. it was extraordinary. >> many messages to president tru trump, to republicans whose many constituents on single issue voters voting on gun rights. but also directly to those constituents. here is one example of wayne lapierre talking about, warning about, a runaway train. >> here's something we must be careful of as we go forward. we all have to be careful that this doesn't become a runaway train. what if all of your medical records, perhaps your conversations with your doctor, your prescription information, do we really want all that on a government list and in the government database? i even heard a television pundit recently suggesting that people seeking to buy a firearm should be interviewed first. i mean, interviewed first?

>> look, it's strategic. it's strategic and he's saying what they believe. not that they think people will make lists and socialism is going to take them to the country, but that it's a slippery slope or it's a camel's nose under the tent or allowing anything to move in the direction that would regulate or restrict gun rights is just the start of a domino effect. the most structured thing covering gun debates i think i ever witnessed was shortly after sandy hook i went into a meeting with the assumption that something was going to have to give. just politically it wasn't tenable to stay where they were. two of those aides had just gotten off a conference call with the nra who made it very clear they will get nothing. they had plenty of proposals, whether it's arming individuals in schools, whether it's on mental health, whether it's even supporting senator cornyn and senator murphy's background bill which is a senate bill, not a

congress bill. they have learned and they have decided strategically there is no benefit to them for that. you just have to look at the assault weapons ban and learn lessons on that. anybody who thought they would take a different tone wasn't paying attention five years ago at sandy hook. they are the front facing, the outward facing in this fight. they will take the lumps, they know they'll get hit on it, but they think if they give an inch, they'll lose entirely. >> a large part of it is about guns, but they're also appealing to very real concerns among a lot of these constituencies who are very rabid, avid voters in the conservative base about government overreach. that's what that runaway train was about. that's very real. it's not just about guns, it's about big, bad government getting into your lives, knowing about what you do in your life because of these background checks. >> to put it bluntly, there is a

reason strategy works. that's what the 5 million or however many of those who are single issue voters believe this is actually happening. they vote and they believe the government overreach is real and concerns about it are very effective strategically. >> in this moment the thing that's different than, say, sandy hook is that you have this activist student movement that's emerged in the past week who are articulate and passionate and marching on state capitols and are coming to washington. i guess the question now is, does that move it at all? will that change anything? >> i think something that occurred in the town hall last night is something that goes to exactly what the nra members and the nra itself are concerned about. marco rubio at one point said, look, if you want to do this, you'll have to go down the road of banning all semiautomatic weapons. and the crowd cheered. i think there is a real and genuine concern among gun owners that that's where this is going. it's a weird moment, i think, in

this debate where both sides, gun rights advocates and gun restrictionists, seem to be talking past each other. the gun rights folks are really concerned about liberty. the gun restrictionists are really concerned about security. what are we doing in government and politics is trying to figure out the balance of those two and neither seems to be sort of willing to understand, well, maybe give a little on this, give a little on that and we can be a little safer and more secure in our liberty. that's what everyone seems to be talking past. >> wh >> after the nra chief gave his speech this morning, chuck schumer tweeted the president and said, remember, the president is pushing for action on things, including comprehensive background checks that the nra opposes. the last time he showed support for sensible gun reform, no fly,

no buy, he quickly dropped his support once the nra opposed it. i hope this time will be different. he's basically saying, man up, mr. president. >> put your money where your mouth is. i think that is a real issue, is whether the president is actually going to go forward and do what it takes to get some of this stuff from words to legislation to what have you. i don't know. i really don't know. the president has often told people what they want to hear at any particular moment. and he indicated today by tweeting about wayne lapierre just before he showed up on that stage that he is focused on it, he's paying attention, he's trying to see where the political wins are, and where his gut tells him to go, i think, is anybody's guess. i think even folks in the white house are not quite sure where he'll end up. >> the political wins in his gut are sometimes a win, sometimes a loss, it just depends. before we go, we're going to talk about last night's

remarkable town hall on cnn. i want to play one more thing wayne lapierre said this morning about the belief that he has, and he believes other gun owners have, about where gun rights come from. >> the brilliance of america, of our country itself is that all of our freedoms in this country are for every single citizen. and there is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive. it's not bestowed by man but granted by god to all americans as our american birthright. >> granted by god? gun rights? granted by god? look, there are a lot of people who believe that, but there are also a lot of people who believe it is also your right to not be

mowed down by somebody. >> there was a mother who said, what about my son's right to life, liberty and the pursuit to happiness? are those two things not on equal plane? i think maybe that's the central debate we're having here. which right is more important? i think the democrats and some folks in parkland are saying, we deserve to live, we deserve to live in safe communities, and the nra is saying, well, you can't take away our guns. >> and the key question to your point is whether you can have both rights simultaneously, and there should be a way for grown-ups to get in a room and figure it out. >> you saw that play out in the white house yesterday. we had one father saying, this is terrible but it's not about guns right now. and you had the student saying, i can't believe somebody can buy this kind of weapon. senator marco rubio tried to walk the tightrope last night on his position on what kind of

guns americans can buy. >> you start looking at how easy it is to get around it, you would literal vl to ban every semiautomatic rifle that is sold.h to ban every semiautomatic rifle that is sola to ban every semiautomatic rifle that is solv to ban every semiautomatic rifle that is sole to ban every semiautomatic rifle that is sold. and made it utterly irresistible. we took the most advanced e-class ever, and made the most exciting e-class ever. the 2018 e-class coupe and sedan. lease the e300 sedan for $569 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com my dbut now, i take used tometamucil every day.sh

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my ci can worry about it,ine. or do something about it. garlique® helps maintain healthy cholesterol naturally. and it's odor free. and pharmacist recommended. garlique.® your comments this week and those of our president have been p pathetically weak. look at me and tell me guns were a factor in the hunting of our kids in this school this week. and look at me and tell me you accept it and you will work with us to do something about guns. >> that last night indicative of the mood inside the cnn town hall and illustrative of the near impossible task facing florida's senator, comforting parents who had to do the

unimaginable, bury their own children. they think marco rubio is responsible for the action that cost children their lives. rubio wants to break the gridlock on guns and is have a real conversation on what to do. his first proffer? two significant shifts that break away from the nra. >> i firmly believe in this country if you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle, and i will makepro a law that will take that away. i'm reconsidering that position, and i'll tell you why. because while it may not prevent an attack, it may save lives in an attack. >> that's pretty remarkable, you know, the fact that he said at some point during the town hall, i don't have courage as a republican to come here, you have courage.

and he's right. this is his job. he's been elected united states senator and it is his job to go and talk to his constituents, all of whom those people were. having said that, he also was in a position where the whole room was against him. i mean, let's be honest. most of the room was against him. they want to see changes that go far beyond what he wants to do, what he is willing to do, what he believes he should do. >> that's 100% true. i've heard the school -- these were his constituents who have been been there no matter what. they also could have held town halls in more favorable parts of the state. while he definitely shifted on two things, he stood his ground on other things. i think it's important to understand -- like mike was talking about, if you want a realistic conversation about how things could actually move forward on a policy basis, then you need to understand where people actually stand on things, not just pander because of the

audience you're currently talking to. we were talking on the break, one of the most interesting elements was on banning automatic weapons -- not automatic waeeapons, they're mostly out of existence now, but banning semiautomatic weapons and mathe crowd acted like he h walked into a rake. he said, do you really want me to ban semiautomatic rifles? the crowd went crazy. but for those that marco rubio is serving from the positions he holds, that's exactly where he wants to be. >> he said that in a tweet today. he said, banning all semiautomatic weapons may have been popular with the audience at cnn town hall, but it is a position well outside the mainstream. unclear if that's true, but it is certainly well outside the mainstream of the conservative base that he relies on in florida, that he certainly will rely on assuming he makes another run at the presidency

again. >> i did think it was really interesting the shifts that he made on those two issues are ones that i think democrats have always thought you could find common ground on, that if you restrict magazine sizes to something smaller, you can just reduce the carnage. marco rubio's shift on that is interesting, because a lot of other republicans are just not willing to go there. they're still not willing to go there. so it raises the question that phil raised earlier this morning, is this about what people really believe or what people are willing to do based on their belief and their willingness to compromise in order to get something done, or are they unwilling to go that far because they're worried about the political consequences of going against -- the position of the nra is not to restrict those magazines. there are real political consequences for republicans who are more worried about fights on the right than they are about fights on the left. >> that is something senator rubio was confronted about from an emotional survivor of the

massacre last week. let's take a listen. >> senator ruby oio, can you te me right now you will not accept a single donation from the nra? >> i do support the second amendment and i also support the view of everyone having the right to go to school and be safe. and i do support the law that would keep guns out of the hands of a deranged killer. that's why i've supported these things. >> will you donate more money? >> that's the wrong answer. the answer is people buy into my agenda. >> look, he's trying to make this point that the nra supports him because of what he supports. they're not buying influence with him. and i think it's sort of misunderstood where the nra's power comes from. it's really not for money. they do spend a lot of money from the outside, and donating to candidates, there are limits to that. it really is the number of

people who vote. people like to talk about how 60% of americans support certain background checks or other restrictions on guns. but i would say there is a big, very much more motivated 35, 40% who actually get out and vote who disagree with that. >> let me just show our viewers -- you mention nra spending. i want to show our viewers just a glimpse of what we're talking about. what those graphs represent is going back to 2012, the explosion of money that the nra is spending in elections. most of it, the yellow part, most of it is outside spending, meaning not directly to the candidates but spending on behalf of the candidates. and in 2016, most of that giant bar graph, which adds up to more than $50 million, was to president trump. they did focus on six senate races. one of those was marco rubio's. and it was more than $3 million. having said that, money dai--

>> do we doubt that marco rubio doesn't believe this, that he's taking the positions because -- >> he's taking the positions because nra members vote for him. >> and whether that's something he should be reconsidering, i don't know. i do think these kids come up and they're very angry, obviously very angry and very motivated to say something. but i think that going in front of these kids and addressing their anger and their concerns, you know, has to have an effect on the way that they at least consider maybe they're getting these donations from the nra but taking these positions that sort of cut against the nra, i think people like marco rubio are in a stronger position to do so because where else is the nra going to go? on 95% of the issues rubio is going to be with them. >> you saw some of the kids thanking him for coming, even

though they didn't agree with him and they were critical to his face, that people appreciated he stood up, and he was the only republican that did. he gets credit for that. to the shifts that he made, i do think he is -- especially on the weapons for juveniles, he's taking a position the president is also taking. he's not taking that position all by himself for now. >> that's true. he's got political cover from the president but we'll have to see if that goes anywhere. up next, the white house says president trump has total confidence in his national security adviser, general h.r. mcmaster. so why, then, is the defense department exploring a potential move for him back to the pentagon? that's up next. but mania, such as unusual changes in your mood, activity or energy levels, can leave you on shaky ground. help take control by asking about your treatment options.

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welcome back. we're waiting for video of president trump giving a lengthy talk, really a discussion, once again he just had inside the white house with state and local officials talking about school safety. we're going to bring that to you again in less than a minute when we get 30 seconds. very quickly, we've been taking at notes of what's to come. give us a repre vipreview, abby. >> the president said he's been speaking about this recently with the nra and he believes they will back him. that is opposite of what lapierre said yesterday. >> thank you all for being here.

we're doing a lot of things, a lot of things are happening. jeff sessions, secretary jack zayzar is really setting the world on fire with your lowering of prescription drug prices and we're appreciating it very much. people are saying it's already happening. especially the lowering of the price of health care. it's going to be a tremendous reduction in health care pricing because of what we're all doing together. and secretary bess devos for joining us. today we're here with local leaders, law enforcement officers and educational officials to discuss how we can make our schools safe and our communities secure. and no better time to discuss it than right now. and i think we're making a lot of progress, and i can tell you this is a tremendous feeling that we want to get something done. we're leading that feeling, i hope, but there is a great

dealing, including at the nra, including with republican senators and hopefully democrat senators and congressmen. i want to thank curtis hill for being here, attorney general. i also want to thank a really tremendous attorney general, that's pam bondi from florida, for being here. great job you've done there. yesterday i met with survivors of the parkland shooting. the parkland shooting is just horrible. so bad for so many people and so bad for our country. families who have lost their children in school shootings and local community members of washington, d.c. who want to make sure that every child is safe at school. having a lot of problems in washington, d.c. i listened to their heartbreaking stories, asked them for their ideas and pledged to them we will take action, unlike for many years where people sitting in my position did not take action.

they didn't take proper action, they took no action at all. we're going to take action. today we want to hear from you on how we can improve physical security in our schools, tackle the issue of mental health, which is a very big issue. this person that was caught after having killed so many people, 17, and badly injuring so many others. people don't talk about the injuries. they have to go through life with that horrible, horrible situation that they were put in unnecessarily. people don't talk about that. the people that are so bad, i visited them in the hospital in broward county, and these are injuries like people wouldn't believe. and we want to ensure that when we see warning signs, we have to act quickly when we have someone who is mentally unstable. this guy who was a sicko, there was a lot of warning signs,

people calling and saying, he's going to do something bad. people have to act. as i said last week, we must work together to create a culture of our country that cherishes life and forces real human connections. we're also working to reduce violent crime in america and to make our communities places that can be totally safe, for our children, for our families. under my administration, gun prosecutions have increased very significantly. the attorney general is very, very much after that, and we're also after the gangs. the gangs have been incredible. ms-13, i see where a couple commentators that are lightweights said, oh, ms-13, who talks about that? that's all he talked about on fox. no, that's not talked about on fox. that's talked about in communities where they're killing people. not necessarily with guns, because that's not painful enough. this is what they think.

they want to do it more painfully and they want to do it slowly, so they cut them up with knives. they don't use guns, they use knives, because they want it to be a long, painful death to people that had no idea this was coming. and we're getting them out by the thousands. putting them in jail, and we're getting them out by the thousands. and our people from ice and our border patrol people are much tougher than they are. that's the only thing they understand, by the way, is toughness. they don't understand niceness. they understand toughness. and our people are much tougher. they go in there and they grab them by the neck. there's no games being played. and i let them know that's what we want. we need tougher people than they are and our people are a lot tougher than they are. so we're working on getting violent offenders off the streets and guns out of the hands of the dangerous criminals. there is nothing more important than protecting our children. we had a really incredible meeting yesterday with some of

the families that have suffered so gravely. in different places, not only in florida. as you know, columbine, and it was a very sad situation. but i will tell you, background checks, i called many senators last night, many congressmen, and jeff and pam and everybody in this room, i can tell you, curtis, they're into doing background checks that they wouldn't be thinking about maybe two weeks ago. we're going to do strong background checks, we're going to work on getting the age up to 21 instead of 18. we're getting rid of the bump stocks. we're going to be focusing very strongly on mental health because here's a case of mental health. part of the problem is we used to have mental institutions and i said this yesterday when we had a mental institution where you take a sicko like this guy -- he was a sick guy. so many signs.

and you bring him to a mental health institution, those institutions are largely closed because communities didn't want him, communities didn't want to spend the money for them, so you don't have any intermediate ground. you can't put them in jail because he hasn't done anything yet but you know he's going to do something. so whether it be talking seriously about opening mental health institutions again, in some cases reopening. i can tell you in new york, the governors in new york did a very, very bad thing when they closed our mental institutions, so many of them. you have these people living on the streets, and i can say that in many cases throughout the country, they're very dangerous. they shouldn't be there. so we're going to be talking about mental institutions, and when you have some person like this, you can bring them into a mental institution and they can see what they can do, but we got to get them out of our communities. so with that being said, i'd like to ask the very talented

people around this table to just introduce themselves quickly and say a few words and maybe we can start off with pam bondi. >> i'm pam bondi -- >> we've been listening to president trump talking to state and local officials about his thoughts on safety. he talked not just about school safety, not just about gun safety, but went to something that he has talked about for almost three years now, since he was a candidate, which is immigration and gangs and that kind of thing. i want to bring it back around to talk a little bit more about that. the president also, on the issue of guns, went to the notion of mental institutions, which is also something he said yesterday. the idea of mental health and making sure people who have mental issues don't get guns is

something. getting there is one thing. mental institutions? that's something different. >> i think this may have been some vamping on his part. >> he did it twice, though. >> maybe. there is certainly an idea on the right that a lot of things started to go badly when the me mental institutions, you know, 30 or 40 years ago were all closed, that this has caused some societal problem and makes more homeless and that sort of thing. there is also a distinction to be made sort of between mental health issues and the particular set of people who seem to be drawn to these mass shootings, mostly young men, although there is some young women who are isolated. it is particularly a small subset who are not addressed by, what he's talking about, large institutional institutionalizing.

and how do you address this before something happens? >> mark, do you think there will be some kind of pulling along that the president will do than we see on other topics and do so in a successful way? >> in my mind it's the most important thing that will dictate how this is going to go for the next couple weeks. are these just tweets and statements? is he really going to put the work in to put this at the top of the agenda? because i can tell you political people i talk to say this is not at the top of the agenda. the president is going to not only push for this but force the hand of republicans. right now we haven't gotten an indication that that's the case. >> very quickly, does he have the will and does he have the muscle? >> we've seen this president is an erratic trading partner, so

it's hard to know if he's really going to pback this. >> he's supposed to be the leader. anyway, we have to leave it there. thank you for joining us on "inside politics" today. wolf is starting right after a quick break. ♪i used to be spelld that's a big phone. ♪in your arms. [screams] ah, my phone. ♪you built the flame ♪that warms my heart, ♪but lying and cheating ♪has torn us apart ♪and i'm moving on. i hate to ask but is there any chance of an upgrade? upgrade? pretty please? look into my eyes. could be twins.

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hello, i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you're watching from around the world, thank you so much for joining us. president trump volleying to make changes on guns in america to arming teachers to extending background checks. as the president defends, quote, the great people of the national rifle association, the group's leader is speaking out for the first time since the shooting and blames everyone from the fbi to the news media. and confusion in crisis. serious new questions about the moments after the first shots at