Trump to meet with high school students following Florida shooting
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump plans to meet with high school students on Wednesday following last week’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
The White House announced Sunday that Trump will host a “listening session” with both students and teachers, followed by a similar event Thursday with state and local officials to discuss school safety. No further details were provided.
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High school students have been some of the most vocal advocates for new gun laws in response to last Wednesday’s shooting, which left 17 students and staff dead.
Emma Gonzalez, a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the shooting took place, called out Trump during an impassioned speech at a pro-gun control rally Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, roughly 40 miles from where the president is spending the holiday weekend.
“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,” Gonzalez said. “I already know — $30 million.”
Trump visited injured victims and their families on Friday at a nearby hospital and also met with first responders and law enforcement officers to thank them, but he made no mention of new gun laws during his visit.
The president criticized former President Obama and Democrats for not tightening the nation’s gun laws when they were in power.
“Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Trump, however, has focused much of his public comments over the weekend on the new indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference.
In one tweet, he said the FBI missed signs about the suspected gunman’s troubled past because it is “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion.”
The comment drew widespread criticism from Democrats and Republicans.
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