President Donald Trump turned a lot of heads when he suggested, during a meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday, that law enforcement should “take the guns first, go through due process second,” when it comes to people who could be mentally ill.
One of those heads belonged to NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, who responded directly to the president on Fox News tonight.
Echoing a statement released by the NRA, Loesch said the meeting “made for really good TV,” but that some of the ideas discussed would “make for really bad policy that is not going to protect our kids.” She went on to stress to Trump that America “must respect and protect the rights of law-abiding Americans all across the country who right now being punished for the failures of government.”
“I want to be really clear what we're talking about here,” Loesch said. “We are talking about punishing innocent Americans, stripping from them constitutional rights without due process.”
After Loesch made a detour to argue against raising the age limit on long gun purchases to 21, host Martha MacCallum steered her guest back to this issue of “due process” raised by Trump during the meeting.
“Well, the NRA is going to, first off, push for action on protecting children,” Loesch said. “But the NRA is also going to protect due process for innocent Americans. And that is an approach that we are going to hold to. Due process must be respected.”
But seconds later, asked by MacCallum if she thinks the NRA and Trump can work something out despite their differences, as the president has repeatedly promised, Loesch hastily downplayed the apparent divide.
“We are in lockstep with the president on protecting children,” Loesch insisted. “We are in total agreement with him on that. But we want to respect due process.”