The vice mayor of Florida’s Broward County assailed President Trump as a “hypocrite” Friday for planning to visit with families of the school shooting victims, according to a report.
“Him coming here is absolutely absurd, and he’s a hypocrite,” Mark Bogen, a Democrat, told CNN. “How can you come here and talk about how horrible it is when you support these laws?
“This is a man who supports teenagers and other people [being able to] to purchase assault weapons … and then comes down here and wants to act as though this is horrible and shouldn’t happen, but goes back to Washington and supports it,” Bogen said.
“It is hypocrisy, it is absolute hypocrisy,” he added.
On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he would be flying to Florida “to meet with some of the bravest people on earth – but people whose lives have been totally shattered.”
“Am also working with Congress on many fronts,” he added without elaborating.
During his address to the nation Thursday, the president emphasized the mental-health angle of mass shootings – but did not mention anything about gun laws.
A year ago, Trump signed a measure that revoked an Obama-era rule that required the Social Security Administration to disclose information about certain mentally ill people to the national gun background check system.
“So President Trump now, based on his actions, allows mentally ill people to purchase guns when over a year ago they could not,” Bogen said.