Trump is now utterly irrelevant to policymaking
By Paul Waldman March 12 at 1:21 PM
When President Trump held a bizarre meeting with members of Congress two weeks ago on the topic of guns, everyone immediately knew that just about everything he said could simply be ignored. When he said that the minimum age to buy a rifle should be raised from 18 to 21, and that when it comes to dangerous people authorities should “take the guns first, go through due process second,” and that unlike members of Congress he would stand up to the National Rifle Association, both his friends and his enemies had the same reaction:
Weird as it might be, it doesn’t really matter, because very soon he’ll come right back to the standard conservative position on guns.
Despite all that divides us, liberals and conservatives have come to agree that what comes out of Trump’s mouth on matters of policy is all but meaningless. In fact, it’s not just his words. Not since Edith Wilson effectively ran the government for more than a year after her husband, Woodrow, suffered a stroke in 1919 has the president of the United States been this irrelevant to the formulation of public policy.
The White House has released its proposal on guns, and like everything else that Republicans suggest, it is exactly what the NRA wants. The idea of raising the minimum age for rifle purchases is gone, as is any talk of a comprehensive effort to patch the holes in our background check system. Instead, the administration advocates putting more guns in schools in the hands of teachers and school administrators, and says it will form a commission headed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to study the issue of school safety.
DeVos’s most notable statement on the issue to date was when she was asked in her confirmation hearing about allowing guns in schools and " target="_blank">responded that in some places you might need them “to protect from potential grizzlies.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/03/12/trump-is-now-utterly-irrelevant-to-policymaking
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