A study in contrasts:
As reported in a tweet by Maggie Haberman of the NY Times:
Pool was ushered into Broward Health North hospital at 6:55 PM and was positioned at the end of a long corridor.... The hallway was empty aside from a doctor and security personnel.
POTUS, FLOTUS, and an unnamed doctor walked down the hallway at 7:09 PM and POTUS spoke to the media for roughly a minute.
"The job they've done is incredible and I want to congratulate you," POTUS said as he shook the doctor's hand.
The president said "yes I did, I did indeed" when asked if he met with the victims.
"It's sad that something like that could happen," Trump said.
He said he was impressed with the speed with which first responders reacted, calling it "record-setting" and "in one case 20 minutes."
"It's an incredible thing," POTUS said. POTUS did not respond when asked in the nation's gun laws need to be changed and then walked into another room.
Motorcade was rolling at 7:15 PM.
That's 20 minutes in a hospital for photo ops with the staff - see top image below. And then off to a party at Mar-a-Lago.
As posted by Obama WH photographer Pete Souza on his Instagram account:
Dec. 16, 2012. Newtown. After meeting with families for hours, he sat alone in a classroom before attending a prayer vigil: “....This is our first task — caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.
And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?
Can we claim, as a nation, that we're all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we're truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?
I've been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we're honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change.”
(emphasis mine)
I really, really, really wish I could post a direct link to Emma Gonzalez' speech at an anti-gun rally in Florida today. But as one of those who made it out of the school alive, she's a bit too young to be shown here.
So go look for "Speech from student Emma Gonzalez on guns and NRA" on YouTube.
A transcript doesn't do it justice, but here are some passages anyway:
We know that they are claiming mental health issues, and I am not a psychologist, but we need to pay attention to the fact that this was not just a mental health issue. He would not have harmed that many students with a knife....
If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I'm going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.
You want to know something? It doesn't matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one-half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don't do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.
To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.....
In February of 2017, one year ago, President Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses.
From the interactions that I had with the shooter before the shooting and from the information that I currently know about him, I don't really know if he was mentally ill. I wrote this before I heard what Delaney said. Delaney said he was diagnosed. I don't need a psychologist and I don't need to be a psychologist to know that repealing that regulation was a really dumb idea.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was the sole sponsor on this bill that stops the FBI from performing background checks on people adjudicated to be mentally ill and now he's stating for the record, 'Well, it's a shame the FBI isn't doing background checks on these mentally ill people.' Well, duh. You took that opportunity away last year....