More mass shootings.....

Mulvaney defends Trump on mass shootings

By BIANCA QUILANTAN

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick MuIvaney defended President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying mass shootings have been an issue for decades and he doesn’t “think it's fair to try and lay this at the feet of the president.”

After ABC’s Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl listed off the latest string of shootings since Trump’s inauguration, Mulvaney responded on “This Week” by saying it is a problem that has “happened for many decades.”

“You make an excellent point there which is this cancer, this difficulty that we face as a nation, predates this administration by many, many years,” Mulvaney said. “What can you do? You have to try and fix the society, right? You have to figure out why people now take it upon themselves to take guns into large groups of people.”

Mulvaney said he spoke with the president after the shooting in El Paso (20 killed), and again Sunday morning about the shooting in Dayton, Ohio (9 killed).

Before calling the governors of Texas and Ohio, Mulvaney said Trump called the attorney general “to find out what we could do to prevent this type of thing from happening, what we could do to send a message to the sick people who would do this kind of stuff that this is not appropriate.” The president also tweeted Sunday: “God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.“

While the White House will address the role of guns in the shootings, Mulvaney said he wants to also address the shootings as a social issue, and mentioned the El Paso shooter’s manifesto, which he said was on social media.

“We've given a wide audience to these people,” Mulvaney said. “We've made them celebrities. We've allowed them to spew their hate without any restrictions whatsoever. Not saying we're going to regulate social media, I'm just saying we have to have a broad-based discussion about the causes here.”

“We've had guns in this country for — for hundreds of years,” he said. “We haven't had this until recently and we need to figure out why.”

When asked if Trump has downplayed the dangers of white nationalism, Mulvaney defended the president repeatedly.

“I don't think it's at all fair to sit here and say that he doesn't think that white nationalism is bad for the nation. These are sick people,” Mulvaney said. “You cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head. These are sick people. You know it, I know it, the president knows it.

“This type of thing has to stop,” he added. “We have to figure out a way to fix the problem, not figure out a way to lay blame.”