{"id":348509,"date":"2018-02-16T10:41:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T09:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-is-spineless-and-cowardly-over-mass-shooting-in-florida-piers-morgan-attacks-his-old-friend-rt-uk-news\/"},"modified":"2018-02-16T10:41:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T09:41:41","slug":"trump-is-spineless-and-cowardly-over-mass-shooting-in-florida-piers-morgan-attacks-his-old-friend-rt-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-is-spineless-and-cowardly-over-mass-shooting-in-florida-piers-morgan-attacks-his-old-friend-rt-uk-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is \u2018spineless and cowardly\u2019 over mass shooting in Florida, Piers Morgan attacks his old friend \u2014 RT UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>        Piers Morgan has lashed out at US President Donald Trump following the horrific high school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead when an expelled teen took to the campus grounds with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. <\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Morgan, a close friend of the president, has previously been critical of Trump\u2019s weak stance on gun control \u2013 unsurprising, considering the US\u2019 National Rifle Association spent $31.19 million on pro-Trump advertising campaigns during the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FRTnews%2Fvideos%2F10156465258249411%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" style=\"border:none;overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Three weeks ago in Trump\u2019s first international interview in Davos, Switzerland, Morgan questioned the president on his little-to-none approach on toughening gun laws.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cDomestic gun violence killed at least 32,000 (in 2016),\u201d<\/em> Morgan told Trump during the Davos interview.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cTwo of the worst mass shootings in American history have now happened on your watch in Las Vegas and at a church in Texas.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Morgan, who struck up a friendship with the now-US President after he won Trump\u2019s Celebrity Apprentice in 2008, asked <em>\u201cpeople will be saying, you\u2019re very tough on security, you want to keep Americans safe, but if you don\u2019t do anything about gun violence at all that seems an irrational position for somebody who wants to keep Americans safe?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Trump tried to deflect the question, pointing out than France \u2013 which has far tougher gun control laws than the US \u2013 still suffers at the hands of gun-toting maniacs.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cTake a look at that terrible slaughter where so many people were killed\u2026 by thugs with guns,\u201d<\/em> Trump said.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cSo the bad guys have the guns and if you would have had somebody with a gun when they walked in so you could have bullets going in the other direction, you wouldn\u2019t have hundreds of people killed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/418951-florida-shooter-cruz-confession\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2018.02\/thumbnail\/5a861244fc7e934e498b45e1.jpg\" alt=\"Shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz at Broward County Jail in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, US. \u00a9 Miguel Guttierez \/ AFP TV\"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>In an opinion piece written for the Daily Mail, Morgan pointed out the president\u2019s warped logic.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWhat Trump didn\u2019t say is that 130 people were killed in Paris that night; a terrible toll, but around a quarter of the number of people killed by guns in America every week,\u201d<\/em> the often controversial TV host wrote.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWhen I pointed out that countries like Britain, which also has very tough gun laws, average just 32 gun deaths a year, he deflected again: \u2018But you have a lot of terrorism.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cYes, it\u2019s true Britain had a number of Islamist terror attacks in 2017. But the total death total was smaller (35) than the number murdered by guns in America every day. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cHe intends to do absolutely nothing to stop these massacres happening again,\u201d<\/em> Morgan wrote in his op-ed.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWell, I\u2019m sorry Mr President, but this just isn\u2019t acceptable. You can\u2019t pretend to be tough on security but turn a blind eye when yet another US school (there have been over 280 school shootings since Sandy Hook) is turned into a human slaughterhouse.<\/em><br \/><em>\u201cIt\u2019s spineless and cowardly, and you know it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Trump took time out of his busy schedule for yet another Twitter break.<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/963878055969198080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>This little social media tidbit enraged Morgan, who is a well-known advocate of tightening gun regulations.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe tragic truth is no child, teacher or anyone else now feels safe in an American school,\u201d<\/em> he wrote for the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe Florida attack was the ninth biggest gun atrocity in American history.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThat means three of the country\u2019s worst ever mass shootings have now happened on your watch \u2013 in just five months.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em\/>Then, borrowing from the American president\u2019s own vocabulary when he spoke of the Las Vegas shooting that left 59 dead and 851 injured, Morgan summed up Trump\u2019s gun law argument with a few deft strokes of his pen.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThat\u2019s \u2018sicko\u2019, Mr President,\u201d<\/em> he wrote.<em> \u201cAnd anyone who thinks the only answer to this carnage is even more guns is also \u2018sicko.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/418973-trump-morgan-guns-spineless\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Piers Morgan has lashed out at US President Donald Trump following the horrific high school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead when an expelled teen took to the campus grounds with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Morgan, a close friend of the president, has previously been critical of Trump\u2019s weak stance on gun control \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-348509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}