neil: >> all right the president last night are visiting those injured in the attack this week in florida that left 17 dead. i believe of the 20 who were injured, about half have been released from the hospital and some likely to be there for quite a while more. today, we're not quite aware of what the president's plans are, but he's still in the west palm beach area. that's where we'll find our kevin cork. >> always good to be with you, my friend. and a good saturday it is in south florida. the president playing the role of comforter in chief, neil, as he continues to reach out to not only the victims, but the first responders in doing a magnificent job to help the lives in the tragedy in

parkland. we don't have the president's exact timing and that changes hour to hour and we'll share pictures in the meantime. i want to share some of what the president had to say to first responders as he thanked them for all they did to save lives. >> very sad something like that could happen, but the job the doctors did, the nurses, the hospital, first responders, law enforcement, really incredible. >> really incredible, indeed. just some of the comments from the president last night on an evening where, frankly, there was no shortage of reaction marking the heroism of so many over the past few days. it's a theme, by the way, neil. he continued at a round table with law enforcement and lawmakers and other community stake holders, a solutions-based approach for this that has torn the fabric of this and so many communities across the country.

back to you, neil. neil: do you know his exact plans or what the schedule calls for? >> i have to be careful here. neil: i understand. >> often we will get on background information and we have an idea where he'll be going today, but for public consumption, i can only share that he'll be active once again today. that should not come as a surprise. neil: yeah, i'm sorry, buddy, i didn't want to put you at risk of disobeying that. >> not a problem. neil: thank you very much, kevin corke. let's go to karl rove, how the president handled this last night, a reassuring speech. and of course, he's been in this role himself certainly with president bush after 9/11 and we've seen presidents have to deal with this far more often than you'd think, karl. >> it's sort of the one big sort of informal and comforter in chief as kevin corke said

and the president has responsibility in this horrific incident. neil: when the president is at the scene of a school shooting, you run the risk of running into protesters, gun control and-- how do you juggle this? presidents have had to deal with this, the fbi should have known this and we've seen this time and time again. but what do you do? >> well, look, the advance people can generally sort of sculpt the event, structure the event so you minimize the picture of the president being protested, but one thing you can never avoid, in fact, you have to welcome it, because it's your responsibility, is the anger of those involved. my suspicion when the president visited the hospital, there may have been parents, grieving and

angry and striking out and the president has to simply accept the fact that if he's there, he may be on the receiving end of their anger and their grief and he has to deal with it as best he can. that's part of the job, but, you know, the protests you can always, you know, schedule, you organize it show you get in and out of the place so the camera is not seeing that as a background, separate and apart from the visit. that personal anger, whether it's a question of a war or a natural disaster or a shooting like this. there are always people saying why my family, why my child, why my spouse, why my husband, so noert. >> and we tend to put our president on a mount olympus role bigger than human beings. they're more human when they show emotion. i was thinking of your old boss in the oval office after 9/11, let's take a look at this. >> families, the children, i'm a

loving guy and i'm also, someone, however, who's got a job to do. and i intend to do it and this is a terrible moment. neil: now, he teared up in that moment and it reminded me of still another moment involving barack obama after sandy hook which we're going to show in a little bit. the issue being that it's okay for presidents to depart from script, to depart from the moment in this case to wipe away a tear and let people realize, they're human, too. >> right. neil: how does that play out though to folks at home. >> well, look, and people took that moment with george w. bush on the 13th of september as a moment of empathy. what they saw there was a president who cared deeply about the people whose lives were lost and the families touched in such a terrible way on 9/11 and they

also heard a moment of resolve, i have a job to do and there was a firmness in that voice. and last night the president did an excellent job of complementing the first responders and i thought the round table was useful because it talked about things that everyone could do to confront the situations like this. i think the one moment missing last night was the empathy. the president visited with a number of the shooting victims. he visited with a number of the families of those people who were hospitalized and it would have been better if we'd heard more about them and seen those moments of those instances of empathy with them and their condition, and the broader issue of the 17 young lives, mostly young lives snuffed out in a violent, senseless evil act. it would have been better to hear that than the first responders got there and record breaking how fast they got there. that was fine and good, but we needed more empathy last night.

i hope the president has a moment to strike that today. his wife has done really well in moments like this. i think it would be good for the country if they saw the president's heart on this. just as we see when he talks about victims of violent illegal criminals, like kate steinle. he has a huge empathy and heart for people and families touched by that. it would be good to see that today. neil: and much has been made of the pictures taken after visiting some of the victims and later on, some of the security folks who have done such yeoman's work since this shooting. but if i'm the mother or father of someone who lost their life and for whatever reason, i might recoil at the image of, you know, local officials, even the president celebrating our law enforcement community because my child's gone. >> right. neil: and i don't want to

politicize this either way, karl, how do you balance that? how do you balance the anger you're going to get from victim's families with those who are trying to then and now and in the future protect other families? >> right, well, you're right. it's a balance and the president, when he talks with the victims' families and with those shot and in the hospital, he's going to run the risk of having people say, mr. president, if only you had done this or if only you would do this, we would be spared this. i think one of the members of the president, i will do everything within my power to confront this problem and we all have responsibility to confront it. yesterday and the day before, i was taken by a couple of things, a piece in the wall street piece by i believe the former police commissioner of boston, if the kid would have surfaced in boston, we would have worked

with him and 39 times, i think, this kid was local police drew him in and yet, and we know the school expelled him and we know the school said, you can never come back to campus with a backpack. so, you know, but i was taken, he said boston has in place processes and initiatives that will take a childlike this and do what they can to keep him from spinning out. and then the other thing was, there was also a piece in the wall street journal, an editorial talking about what the state could do. you know, in the state of florida, it's easier to buy an ar-15 than it is for a teenager to buy a handgun and the state laws that allow police to step in and deal with mental illness like this child was suffering are need to be revisited and examined. neil: well, there's an opportunity for that. this is that opportunity. thank you, karl, very, very

much. now, the president has been busy on this very issue meeting with parents, for example, of columbine, sandy hook victims, that's something that's planned in the very, very near future. i don't know if my next guest will be among those he's meeting with, but scarlet lewis lost her six-year-old son jessie, six years old in the sandy hook shooting. jessie helped to save some of his classmates by shouting run the day that lone gunman walked into his classroom. he died, they lived. his mom is here. thank you for coming, scarlet, i know it's very, very tough. when you see something like this and see it happen again, what goes through your mind? >> it's horrifying and my heart goes out to those families. it's been very difficult for all of us in sandy hook over the past week, we know exactly what they're going through. the anger and frustration that they're feeling, the horrifying

fact that their child was viciously gunned down in what is supposed to be a safe haven. all the arrangements that they're going through now trying to determine whether they'll be open or closed caskets because of the devastation that ar-15's have on the body and it's devastating and my heart goes out to them. neil: and there are voices raised politically after sandy hook and the unique tragedy in that so many young children, four, five, six years old, maybe we have to do something about controlling the number much guns out there, who gets access to them, maybe it's a mental health issue, maybe it's violent video games. regardless just since sandy hook there have been more than a dozen prominent shootings. you know, injuring, killing hundreds more. you could even add las vegas to that last year. what do you think the problem

is? >> i really would like president trump to address the actual cause and the actual cause is anxiety, anger, disconnection, isolation, in our youth in america, and you know, i knew following jessie's death that i couldn't wait for someone else to come up with a solution. and i was heartened to find there actually was one, that jessie lewis choose love movement offers this solution and it's teaching kids how to have healthy relationships. how to manage their emotions. how to have deep, meaningful connections, schools and tools for resilience. kids that can get along with one another, kids that love one another, they're not going to want to harm one another. it's called social emotional learning, it's been around for a while, there are decades of

research showing that children who have social emotional learning get better grades and test scores and graduation rates right off the bat, but there are long-term studies that show that kids that had social emotional learning in kindergarten, it follows them through adulthood and they found that these adults now have less substance abuse, less mental illness of all kinds, less incarceration, less violence and anger and even less divorce rates because, well, we're teaching kids how to get along with one another. it is the solution, the jessie lewis choose love movement offers a comprehensive pre-k through 12th grade, social emotional learning in all 50 states and 45 countries. basically it teaches kids to thoughtfully respond in every situation and to love one another, we know that kids that love one another are not going to want to harm one another. i would really love the president to address social

emotional learning in our schools, and i would like to put out a call to action to all parents and educators to make sure that your schools have a social and emotional learning program. we know that it is the solution to the issue that we're seeing and i'm just very grateful to be a part of this solution. >> well, you're a remarkable mom. apparently you had a remarkable son and it would be very easy to be very angry and you know, crawl into a hole. you didn't do that. i think you serve his memory very well. thank you very much. >> thank you. neil: more after this. we had long deployments in iraq. i'm really grateful that usaa was able to take care of my family while i was overseas serving. it was my very first car accident. we were hit from behind. i called usaa and the first thing they asked was 'are you ok?' they always thank you for your service,

which is nice because as a spouse you serve too. we're the hayles and we're usaa members for life. see how much you could save with usaa by bundling your auto and home insurance. get a quote today.

>> do you agree, it seems that t with the president, it's a meant health issue and not a gun

issue, that that people getting them is not the issue to you? >> well, i believe that no one with mental health issues should be having guns, of course, it's ridiculous. neil: all right. but apparently without those mental issues being known to a local gun shop, the fact was that nikolas cruz was able to get a gun and that was the gun used in the shooting this past week that killed 17 and injured up to 20. i want to bounce this off a key member in congress, a member of the house intelligence and judiciary committee, california democratic congressman. sir, good to have you with us. thanks for taking the time. >> sure, thanks for having me on. neil: what the florida attorney general is saying that we've got to crack down on this. i guess there are laws on the books you can't get your hands on the weapons with the kind of mental background issues that mr. cruz had, but he got them and because authorities weren't

aware. at least a the gun shop when it got to them, because they do a check, that there was nothing to indicate that. do you think we need to tighten that up? >> preventing people with mental health illness from getting a firearm is one aspect of reducing gun violence and right now, we need to have laws, federally, that require the states to put into the criminal data base that licensed dealers check, a history of mental illness, that's not a requirement. states do that voluntarily and also, there's the loopholes where a single buyer to a-- i'm sorry, a seller to a buyer would not have to conduct that background check if he were to buy it at a gun show, for example, or exchange a weapon with a family member or a friend. and so there's a number of possibilities for a person with mental illness to get a firearm. the real issue is the firearm being used. an ar-15 or other types of

assault weapons. the bullets fly so much faster and the pistol grip so many easier to spray a crowd and leaves little chance for any goodbye with a gun to respond quickly as we saw in the dallas shooting where i think it was about five police officers two years ago were mowed down, you don't have much of a chance when those weapons of war are on the streets. neil: congressman, you're aware of some lapses in oversight here with the fbi, back in january this year, had been alerted specifically by someone close to the shooter that he wasn't-- that he wasn't right, that he was getting increasingly bizarre in his behavior, violent in his social postings, hurting animals and someone who knew him very, very well and somehow that the fbi dropped the ball, and an apology, that demanded by

members of coping to haul them before the committee to talk about that, but the florida governor says that the fbi director ray should resign. what do you think? >> the shooter should have been confronted as soon as this tip was passed to law enforcement. you know, it's too bad to hear about this because there are so many cases i've heard about where the fbi did intervene and they made a difference. here they didn't and we have to learn from that and determine whether it was a resources issue, whether it was poor judgment on the part of the agents or the technicians that received the information, and learn from it. i don't think it's something you would expect the fbi director to resign from, but he should demand accountability from those who were in the chain of receiving that information and we should do all we can so that we respond as quickly and with aability the next time a tip like this is passed along. neil: others have said, congressman, the fbi is so distracted on so many other issues, including, you know, the

russia thing and all that, it seems like apples and oranges to me that that is getting in the way of regular job protecting people, keeping people alive, including let a slip-up like this in florida happen. what do you think? >> i don't think that's true, neil. you know, they're not deaf, they hear what is said about them by the president and others, you know, who are aligned with the president, but i have two brothers who are police officers, they work with the fbi. they just put their heads down and they do their jobs. they don't want their jobs to be politicized. they don't really give a rip whether a republican or a democrat is in office and they don't, you know, they don't tailor their cases, you know, to the politics of our country and that's why it's so disheartening that they're coming, i think, unfairly under fire. in this case the criticism is fair. they should have acted on this tip and again, you know, accountability needs to be had

here, but i don't see a larger issue where the russia problems are affecting the day-to-day business of the agents on the street. neil: i can switch gear back to the russia thing if you don't mind, congressman, you know the indictment of these 13 russian officials and another three presumably russian companies that were allegedly trying to get themselves involved in the election and even as confusing folk after the election, both those supporters of hillary clinton and of donald trump. the fact that there were no american entities named at that time or that were unwitting participants in this, what do you make of this? >> i make it's an evolving case and shows how long it takes to prosecute individuals like this, the case it looks like goes all the way back to 2014. there's foreign witnesses, foreign transactions, but it shows to me that there's the clearest evidence that russia meddled in our elections and

they feel comfortable going forward, proving it beyond the reasonable doubt, the highest standard in the land. i hope for congress this moves us to take this seriously and get our act together so that we can do all we can to protect the battle box. because if you listen to our intelligence chief and read this indictment, the russians haven't left america, they're ready for the next election, we're not. neil: and this did not change the election results, but it did have-- they were, the russians were involved now even the trump administration, maybe the president himself, seems to be pointing to that that it was a hoax, that they were actively involved. and do you believe that seems to indicate that it changed the results of the election? >> i don't know how mr mr. rosenstein could make that assessment. that's not the job of the prosecutor to do that.

i don't know how you can charge 13 individuals posting what they did and at the amount of money they did and you can determine that not a mind was changed. that's something that would congress would do or an independent commission and i wrote legislation with elijah cummings and members of congress to have a commission to look at that issue, but more importantly to look forward at what we can do knowing that they have these capabilities, as well as other adversaries to make sure that we're better equipped the next time we go to the poll. neil: you're not convinced the possibility that enough minds were changed, that the wrong person was elected? >> well, over 100 million people viewed russian propaganda in the last election, that's what twitter and google and facebook told our committee. so, again, i think at this point it's immeasurable until we complete our investigation. i don't think we've seen evidence yet that vote tallies were changed and that's what

mr. rosenstein was referring to, but we still have issues with security at the ballot box and i think the reform that we could put in place as jay johnson, former homeland security secretary told congress, to devote more federal resources to the states and counties. neil: i understand that and i know we're going long here and i apologize for that. i want to be very clear, are you saying that you still, still harbor doubts about the legitimacy of donald trump as president of the united states? >> no, i believe that the russians sought to change minds and whether minds were changed or influenced is still has not been determined. i don't think there's any evidence that vote tallies were changed, we should understand that. he's the president of the united states and i want president trump and every other candidate who runs 2020 in the election to have a free and fair election and congress is not doing that right now. neil: the broward county sheriff

says, the congressman touched on this, 39 calls about the suspected shooter some were domestic violence issues and a lot of others. how many tips did we miss? what could this signal? michael is the florida county commissioner. michael, on this, it always leads to confusion, would have, could have, should have. easy for me to play monday morning quarterback on the call to the fbi. but a lot of parents who lost children and loved ones in this attack will say, man, oh, man, there were a lot of warnings and things shared. were they? >> a better job needs to be done by law enforcement. if we're going to encourage people to see something and say something, they have to be, understand if they do say something, it's going to be properly acted upon by law enforcement and i think that's an important thing to remember here because we have a community that's dealing with sorrow, dealing with tragedy and dealing with a little bit of anger.

neil: understandably. i know you have a child going to that very school, i believe, right? >> yes, i have my daughter is a senior at that high school, my boys both graduated there. i had a niece in the school at the time of the shooting. neil: wow. >> i was the mayor of this town for ten years, so this is a very personal thing for me, i've been at funerals now, i know these kids personally. i've coached with their parents, i've seen them around town. this is a very small community, everybody knows everybody here. neil: i'm sure. so as a dad, i'm sure you can appreciate some other parents saying i just can't have my kid go back into that school. what do you tell them? >> well, i mean, i've spoken to people. that building has to come down. no child is going to go back into that freshman annex in that building there. that building must come down. neil: the building where the shooting occurred. >> correct. that building's got to come down. there should be some funds then appropriated to rebuild that, it's a certainly classroom

addition there, there should be some funds set aside for the appropriate memorial for those students, but to send a child back into that specific building would be unconscionable. neil: you know, commissioner, i'm always curious how you have an incident where police were visiting the shooter's house over the years, you know, more than three dozen times and i don't know what the individual issues were, but then, of course, we've got these revelations of snapchat conversations that the shooter was apparently have, cut arms and hurting himself and talking about buying a gun, separate conversation and a youtube text about his goal to shoot up the school, et cetera. how is that kind of stuff shared? obviously, something, that i understand, but would anybody else be able to know? we have 39 visits to this kid. is he on some sort of an alert list?

or how is that explained? >> well, they need to do a better job among different law enforcement branches to make sure that that is getting to the appropriate levels of investigation. if the fbi field office somewhere else is getting this and they're transferring it to the fbi miami office and it's not getting to the local police or vice versa, we need to do a better job there because anything else is unacceptable to our families. i mean, these kids go to school expecting a safe environment. you know, i'm shocked to learn that you know, there was just so many tip-offs here and you know, i get it. everybody has their rights, but what about the rights of the children that are going to school? and their rights to have a safe environment in their classroom every day? >> and finally, we're hearing through the shooter's public defender that he would agree to plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table. how do you feel about that? >> i think that this is