Posted on 02/22/2018 12:09:16 PM PST by Kaslin
On Wednesday, Jake Tapper hosted a CNN town hall special episode with survivors and relatives of the victims of the Florida school shooting titled “Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action.” As one might suspect, this was not exactly a fair and balanced forum for debating gun control. Pro-gun control student activists, teachers, and parents of murdered students dominated the discussion and posed most of the questions to the town hall’s five guest speakers.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch were among those five who went up on stage to answer questions, but they did not get a warm reception from the audience, to say the least. In fact, crowd members actively heckled and jeered at Rubio and Loesch any time they refrained from immediately and unequivocally backing every demand of the questioners for increased gun control.
According to one of the survivors of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High, this hostile reception has an explanation. Colton Haab, a Junior ROTC student at the school who helped fellow classmates get to safety as the shooting began, has alleged that CNN nixed his proposed town hall questions and tried to get him to ask a scripted question instead. From Real Clear Politics:
"I expected to be able to ask my questions and give my opinion on my questions," Haab said.
"Colton Haab, a member of the Junior ROTC who shielded classmates in the midst of terror says he did not get to share his experience," WPLG's Janine Stanwood explained.
"Colton wrote questions about school safety, suggested using veterans as armed school security guards but claims CNN wanted him to ask a scripted question instead so he decided not to go," Stanwood reported.
"CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted," Haab said. "I don't think that it's going get anything accomplished. It's not gonna ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have."
On Thursday morning, CNN responded to Haab by flatly denying that the network ever scripts questions at their events, in effect calling the Junior ROTC student a liar. In addition, according to Real Clear Politics, a CNN insider said that the network nixed Haab’s question because he “wanted to give an extensive speech and not just ask a question, something the network said the forum was not designed for.”
For anyone who actually saw the town hall episode (which you can watch or listen to in full here), this latter claim is particularly strange, as many of the CNN-approved questioners at the event did make short speeches expressing their opinions, especially when addressing Sen. Rubio or Loesch. In one of the more notable examples of this, student activist Cameron Kasky used his question time to morally equate Rubio to the mass shooter, suggest that the senator was a puppet of the NRA accepting bribes in return for inaction on gun control, and insinuate that Loesch doesn’t care about her children being murdered [all following transcripts from CNN, emphasis mine]:
KASKY: Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but the point is you're here and there some people who are not.
And I need to ask two things of you. Number one, Chris Grady, can you stand up? This is my friend who is going to the military. I need you to tell him that he's going to live to make it to serve our country. And then we'll get to the other one.
RUBIO: Not only are you going to live to serve our country, you and you and all of you have a chance to change our country. Change not just our laws but the way we talk about our laws. So absolutely.
KASKY: Thank you. And guys, look, this isn't about red and blue. We can't boo people because they're democrats and boo people because they're republicans. Anyone who is willing to show change, no matter where they're from, anyone who is willing to start to make a difference is somebody we need on our side here. And this is about people who are for making a difference to save us and people who are against it and prefer money. So Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA in the future?
(APPLAUSE)
KASKY: I wish I could have -- I wish I could have spoken -- I wished I could have asked the NRA lady a question. I would ask her, how she can look in the mirror, considering the fact she has children, but maybe she avoids those.
Later in the town hall, student activist Emma Gonzalez took a similar line to Kasky in attacking Loesch as a mother who opposes gun control. After a rambling speech, Gonzalez finally addressed Loesch directly: “Dana Loesch, I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that we will not - - you will not.” In response, Loesch inexplicably thanked Gonzalez "for standing up and speaking out."
But Gonzalez's comments were pretty tame compared to an earlier speech given by yet another student activist, Michelle Lapido, who characterized anyone who accepts money from the NRA as taking “blood money”:
I just want to start with my school is not going to be another statistic in the 18 shootings that happened this year. My school's going to be the last and the beginning of gun control. Stoneman Douglas is strong and will be heard because our kids and our staff did not die for nothing. They died for change and they died for each other. Their deaths will not be taken in vain but as a calling for the change, gun control and safety in America. They're watching us from heaven and we are going to save what they died to protect.
So, I had a question for Ms. Loesch but she's not here yet. So for her and the NRA -- she's probably watching -- and all of you puppet politicians that they are backing. Was the blood of my classmates and my teachers worth your blood money?
Even Tapper thought that that “question” was too over-the-top, so he shut her down temporarily, resulting in boos from the crowd. After Lapido protested and requested permission to ask another question, Tapper relented, leading to another long speech:
LAPIDO: So, I'm going to have to go back to school. On to the same campus, the same building to pick up my stuff, to resume my classes, to keep studying and I'm never going to feel safe on another public school campus ever again. I never want to have to go through and feel like I'm putting myself in such a vulnerable situation ever because that was one of the worst moments of my life.
So why don't we consider the worst possible scenarios? Because these things have been happening all around the country and it's more common than winning any lottery. Why don't we assume the worst situation like we do on planes, where we have life vests in case we land in the ocean or slides in case we need to an emergency crash. Why don't we have Kevlar vests in classrooms for our students? Why don't we build our walls with Kevlar so that kids aren't being shot through their own walls because they're so cheaply built? Why don't we have more funding to protect ourselves? Why do you guys protect yourselves with guns, protect yourselves with vests and you protect America's children with nothing but drywall?
CNN really needs to come up with better explanations for its behavior that can't be debunked by using the network's own material.
How much I wish someone on our side would simply SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, rather than let themselves be bullied by it.
In this case, he should have taken the spoon-fed question, then say something like:
“Senator Rubio, you have always been against common-sense controls on weapons of war...OH SCREW IT, I’m going to ask MY QUESTION, not the one CNN handed to me. So let me start again: Senator Rubio, are you willing to support President Trump’s proposal to allow qualified and well-trained school workers to carry guns on campus, for the immediately protection of students, should another horrific event like this one occur again?”
I WISH he had done something like that. Our side needs to go along with the Fake News Media, and then go OFF SCRIPT - and NAIL THEM LIVE. Only then will we begin turning this boat around. In this case, while I admire him for not letting himself be used as a tool of the Left, this whole episode will be relegated to right-wing news sites, and will not reach the people we need to reach.
LOL, thanks! I would have posted if I could have found it.
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So, I had a question for Ms. Loesch but she’s not here yet. So for her and the NRA — she’s probably watching — and all of you puppet politicians that they are backing. Was the blood of my classmates and my teachers worth your blood money?
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“First, I’m sorry that the GOVT failed your classmates. The *same* govt you now put your faith behind as the ‘solution’.
2nd, any $ received/given, was done so LEGALLY.
Lastly, numerous times across this Country, arms to used to deter/prevent/end crime. If guns were removed the equation, would YOU take responsibility for the blood from those unable to protect themselves from rape, murder\homicide or defending/protecting themselves, their property or others?
Are YOU willing to be responsible for their lives for infringing upon our inalienable Rights?”
I am sure they weren’t “pressuring”, they just wanted to be “helpful”, so the kid asks “the right question”.
Not surprising what CNN said.
Think about the term “gun violence”. I’ve never met a VIOLENT gun. I’ve met some violent people. And THEY will, if disposed to become killers, find ways to kill! Would you also prohibit sale of materials like diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate and steel pipe and fittings - ALL necessary to the functioning of a modern society and innocent enough alone but - as demonstrated by muslim morons - capable of killing hundreds at a time in an instant?
The FBI COULD have kept this idiot in Florida away from his guns BUT THEY WERE TOO BUSY to even INTERVIEW HIM???
And ask yourself WHY - in this highly computerized culture - our various law enforcement agencies DO NOT share background information with one another? Am I paranoid to think that perhaps these sad murders of innocents aid in advancing some totalitarian agenda as they attempt to whip otherwise intelligent people into a frenzy to herd them in a direction they wish them to go? Look up Hegelian Dialectic for starters. There are forces at work in the world today that pay no heed to what most of us consider rules of civilized behavior. They are only guided by what advances their agenda. Does the old phrase “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” come to mind.
Some quotes to ponder:
“A free people should not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might abuse them, WHICH WOULD INCLUDE THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.” That from George Washington!
And the late DEMOCRAT Senator and presidential candidate Hubert Humphery offered this on the topic:
“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against
arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny
which now appears remote in America, but which historically
has proved to be always possible.”
(Ed. Comment: Heavens, how the Democrats have changed!)
And consider the IRONY that the 4th Estate (which has largely morphed into a 5TH COLUMN) always raises the false argument that the Founders never envisioned the advent of weapons like the AR15 and other modern arms. Those 56 men were students of history and the knew well the failings of human nature. They understood that the Constitutional economic and political system they sought to leave as their legacy would produce abundance and liberty for more people than any in history. They ALSO knew that it would spawn advances in technology that would some day make the physical artifacts common in THEIR day the relics they have become in ours. THAT INCLUDED WEAPONS of all sorts!
Now here’s the irony: If one applies to the Second Amendment the media’s claim that ordinary citizens “...the people..” today should ONLY be allowed to possess unrifiled, muzzle loaded flintlock muskets, that “logic” would limit THEM to writing today’s latest “fake news” by dipping quill pens into ink wells and scribbling on parchment!
And for those who still believe that the media are benign innocents simply “journalizing” events here, I’m compelled to add this from Mark Twain:
“Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”
Let me wrap this with a fact MOST humans find so disturbing that they refuse to confront it: MOST OF THE HUMANS KILLED OVER HISTORY WERE MURDERED BY GOVERNMENTS.
It’s called DEMOCIDE and 260 MILLION people died at the hands of a government in just the 20th century.
And THAT is why those of us who still possess critical thinking skills and have families STILL outnumber those who repeatedly call for steps toward the ultimate goal of the left: Total disarmament of this population.
Is there any doubt when these 'teen activists' get an actual look at what's being proposed to make their schools safe that their DNC controllers will go ape. The concerted howl from the left and the teens will be the Police State their demands have wrought. Armed police with rifles at the door, metal detectors, detector wands, restricted access. They will all scream 'Nazi police state, Trump is a dictator'. They have no idea what they demanded not unlike the flying public after 9/11 who got the TSA inspections and 2 hour screenings for a 45 minute flight.
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Is there any doubt when these ‘teen activists’ get an actual look at what’s being proposed to make their schools safe that their DNC controllers will go ape. The concerted howl from the left and the teens will be the Police State their demands have wrought. Armed police with rifles at the door, metal detectors, detector wands, restricted access. They will all scream ‘Nazi police state, Trump is a dictator’. They have no idea what they demanded not unlike the flying public after 9/11 who got the TSA inspections and 2 hour screenings for a 45 minute flight.
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Like BLM “Cops bad. Get out”. BLAM BLAM “Where were the cops when we needed ‘em?”.
Those snowflakes were be screaming, “Fascist” on the 1st locker-check, or taking away their cell-phone (why they’re even ALLOWED is beyond me), or...
No the Left can’t see beyond their next ‘win’. Course, the (R)N(C) doesn’t have one iota of talent to ‘spell it out’ either
And so....CNN is calling a “Parkland Shooting Survivor” a LIAR?
Really?
CNN - the #FakeNews network.
CNN continues to pile lies on top of lies.
Cameron Kasky from NYC performing art school is another Soros pawn, he already has publicist, organized rallies. His facebook appears gone. It’s no accident he go to be up there at debate. Whole thing is orchestrated.
kid is a Michael Moore wanna be, and uses the deaths to promote himself and his agenda the sicko.
CNN on the other hand , how can anyone watch that crap? Boycott all sponsors, call them, and tell others how corrupt CNN is.
Has Hannity showed this?
They have done it before, leopards don’t change their spots.
Perhaps it is just their reputation for false reporting that is clouding my judgment, but I am inclined not to believe them.
Today this could be Charlton Heston’s beautiful answer to CNN and their slimey ilk.
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