Conservative Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) took CNN’s Dana Bash to school over the weekend after facing a grilling days after a mentally ill student killed four and critically wounded nine others during a shooting.
Bash, a self-proclaimed journalist, perpetuated a quote by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) that school shootings are just “a way of life” in America today, a statement that was taken out of context by the Associated Press and quickly fixed in a series of social media posts last week. Still, Bash tried to corner the Arkansas Republican by asking what remedies GOP lawmakers would support to reduce the number of mass shootings.
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“Do you accept that school shootings like this are just a way of life now?” Bash asked him, to which Cotton shot back, “It wasn’t as bad as it might have been because there was a police officer on school premises that was able to neutralize the shooter. Kamala Harris wants to take police officers out of schools. She’s said it in the past.”
A clip of the testy encounter cuts away to a previous statement by the vice president, who said in 2019, “What we need to do about demilitarizing our schools, and taking police officers out of schools.” Republicans have seized on the comment as evidence that the Democratic nominee believes resource officers and teachers do not need to be trained with firearms in order to intercept school shooters.
“That’s her position,” Sen. Cotton continued. “That’s not surprising, because she’s consistently taken positions against law enforcement throughout her career as a San Francisco liberal. If that police officer hadn’t been there and Kamala Harris had gotten her way, many more students and teachers might have been killed.”
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Dana Bash absolutely floored by Tom Cotton’s answer on school shootings, by highlighting Kamala’s record on taking police out of schools:
Dana Bash: “Do you accept that school shootings like this are just a way of life now?”
Tom Cotton: “It wasn’t as bad as it might have been… pic.twitter.com/v8mSajlCyW— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 8, 2024
On Sunday major outlets reported that the mother of the 14-year-old gunman alerted authorities about an impending “emergency” involving her son just hours before he opened fire at a school at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Last week the father of the gunman was charged with second-degree manslaughter for providing his son with a hunting rifle, which he may have used to carry out the crime. The shooting ripped open a deep wound in America’s psyche about the struggle to deal with teen mental health and fortify school grounds, many of which already include emergency methods that teachers employ, such as barricading doors with furniture to block entry into classrooms.
During a rally last week, President Trump ripped the shooter as a “monster” and vowed to “heal our world” if elected, according to Fox News. “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better. We’re going to heal our world. We’re going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence,” he told attendees in Pennsylvania.
(FREE RED HAT: “Impeached. Arrested. Convicted. Shot. Still Standing”)
