Parkland father slams Trump for declaring 'fake' national emergency day after anniversary of shooting
The father of a Parkland shooting victim slammed President Trump for declaring a national emergency over the border wall on the day after the first anniversary of his daughter’s death.
Fred Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was one of the 17 people killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year. Since Jaime’s death, Guttenberg has spoken out about the realities of gun violence and advocated for gun control.
In a Friday morning tweet, Guttenberg called out Trump for initially blaming the Parkland shooting on the Russia investigation.
“Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable,” Trump tweeted three days after the tragedy in 2018. “They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”
Guttenberg’s tweet then questioned why the president was again distracting from the issue of gun violence by threatening to declare a “fake emergency” on the day after the anniversary of the mass shooting.
On the day I buried Jaime, our President blamed her murder on Russia. On day we dealt with the reality that it is now one year, our President again interfered declaring a fake emergency while ignoring reality of gun violence. Any questions as to why I think he does not care?
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) February 15, 2019
On Friday, President Trump declared a national emergency during a press conference in order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Congress’s funding compromise that will avoid a second government shutdown didn’t include the $5.7 billion Trump asked for, but declaring an emergency would allow him to access other funds, as the New York Times reports.
“President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action — including a national emergency — to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday, per the Times.
Guttenberg thanked Speaker Nancy Pelosi for telling reporters on Thursday that the president should have declared gun violence a national emergency — not the alleged “border crisis.”
Yesterday, the day that I had to deal with one year since my daughter was murdered, our President chose to declare a fake emergency. Thank you to real leaders such as @SpeakerPelosi for remembering the real emergency of 40,000 per year from gun violence.https://t.co/bpztCDoeRs
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) February 15, 2019
Guttenberg has directly criticized Trump on multiple occasions, and he didn’t let the president’s failure to focus on gun violence go unnoticed. Others noted that Trump changed language in his official statement on the Parkland anniversary from “gun violence” to “school violence” when tweeting it out.
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle
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