At a televised meeting with lawmakers Wednesday, President Trump endorsed a number of gun control measures opposed by the NRA, and the NRA's reaction was notably chill. On Thursday night, the NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, announced on Twitter he'd just met with Trump, and Trump supports "strong due process" and doesn't "want gun control." Trump confirmed the unannounced "Good (Great)" Oval Office meeting an hour later.
"The twin tweets suggest that it may have taken the gun rights group a little over a day to persuade the president to back away from his apparent embrace of Democratic gun control measures," The New York Times says. About the same time Trump and Cox were tweeting, CNN's Anderson Cooper was asking NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch why her group wasn't attacking Trump.
"Does the NRA feel betrayed by the president?" Cooper asked Loesch, who replied with a list of talking points about age limits. Cooper tried again: "If President Obama had said, 'You know, I kind of believe in taking the guns first and then going through due process second,' I imagine the NRA would have spoken out incredibly strongly about that." Loesch laughed, saying Obama had "a very different approach" and "did not even come close to thinking, as President Trump does, on, for example, national reciprocity or a number of other issues." (She's referring to a concealed-carry expansion, a top priority for the NRA, which Trump shot down Wednesday.)
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Cooper asked again if the NRA feels betrayed by Trump, suggesting Loesch's group is "going out of your way" to "not go after him" as it would a Democratic president. "I can't react, and I don't think NRA members can react, to something that hasn't happened yet," she said. "So you think it's just talk from him?" Cooper asked. "It could be," Loesch said. "I mean, I think he's just entertaining both sides" and "just in a discussion phase."
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