Transcripts For CNNW At This Hour With Kate Bolduan 20180215

And, again, governor, i cannot thank you for your support. We have been on the phone constantly. He was here the second this happened. And i cant thank you, fdle, the Sheriffs Office and the fbi enough. And this is what you dont see around the country, you see teamwork. Thats what happens in florida. And thats what makes us very special. Thank you. Before we take questions, i would like to also thank congressman ted deutch coming down from washington, d. C. Elects officials from parkland around the county. My message to the community, to Broward County, is simple, your elected officials, your commissioners, your state reps, your state senators, make sure these are people that arent worrying about millage rates and saving money. This is a time to save live. We need more Law Enforcement, we need more deputies, this isnt the time to worry about how many dollars might be saved if we dont have a deputy here or a Police Officer here. This is nationwide. We need more, more heroes, more First Responders, not less. And i know many states have different terms to help our mentally ill. And we all pray for our mentally ill, we pray for them to recover. We all know someone or a family who is affected by someone suffering from Mental Illness. The baker act in florida allows Law Enforcement or medical professionals to confine a person involuntarily while they get examined and looked at. But you have to have a reason, you have to be able to arct articulate that they are a threat to themselves or a threat to someone else. What i am asking our lawmakers to do, go back to places like tallahassee, places like washington, d. C. , and give police the power if they see something on social media, if they see graphic pictures of rifles and blood, and gore, and guns, and bombs, if they see something, horrific language, if they see a person talking about i want to grow up to be a serial killer, we need to have the power to take that person and bring them before Mental Health professionals at that particular time, involuntarily, and have them examined. People will be rightfully so concerned about their rights, as am i. What about the rights of the students . What about the rights of young kids who go to schools with book bags and pencils . Dont they have the right to be protected by the United States government, to the best of our ability. Thats what well be doing. Any questions . What about the condition of the people who have been injured . Coach feis, i dont know about the incident yet or what actually his performance was, i know aaron personally. I coached with him. My two boys played for him. I dont know when aarons funeral is. I dont know how many adults are going to go. But youll get 2,000 kids there. The kids in this community loved him. They aboard him. He was one of the greatest people i knew. A phenomenal man. I dont know the specifics yet, but i can tell you what, when aaron feis when aaron feis died, when he was killed, tragically, inhumanely, he did it protecting others. You can guarantee that. Thats who aaron feis was. Can you tell us about the conditions of those what are the extents of the injuries, what kind of injurys . Were fortunate today to have our doctors who worked so tirelessly and saved so many lives yesterday, so were going to bring up one of our doctors to speak about some of those questions and answer those questions. Thank you. Good afternoon. Dr. Evan boyer, director and chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Broward Health north and i also have our colleagues from Broward Health main here and the three of us collectively hopefully could answer some of those questions. So for starters, just because were medical professionals doesnt mean were numb to the emotions and we send out our sympathy to all the families involved. The worst thing as a parent is if your kid doesnt come home from school that day, it hits home pretty hard. We sympathize for them. That being said, nowadays unfortunately we do drills for this. With about nine months ago we did a drill at our facility specifically for an active shooter. So when it becomes a live event, we can work seamlessly with fire rescue, vso, in order to ensure patient safety. I want to commend the prehospital personnel yesterday for all of their efforts and all of the efforts that Broward Health north, Broward Health main and also Coral Springs Medical Center got a couple of patients as well. Specifically to Broward Health north, ill turn it over to dr. Menendez about Broward Health main, north we had nine patients, one was a suspect treated and released. We had two patients deceased. Three patients have been discharged. We currently have three patients in the hospital, one with an extremity wound and working well with physical therapy, another patient still intubated after penetrating trauma to the chest, but is doing well and following commands, and a third patient that is intubated in Critical Condition. Dr. Menendez. Im the director for the Emergency Department at Broward Health Medical Center. Yesterday was a we all as a team took care of the patients. We are a facility, we received seven patients. Of the seven patients right now we have two patients that are critical, stable condition. The other five went home or on their way home and theyre in good condition. The other two are in stable condition. If you have any questions about those. Thank you, director menendez. Unfortunately this is becoming routine for us now, this is the second such episode we had in a year, which is sad. The second time around, like the first time around, the First Responders did a terrific job. And for those of you who understand what we do in trauma, time is of the essence. And really the delivery of those patients by the ems personnel was fantastic, made a huge difference in the outcomes. As dr. Menendez said, we had several, received seven patients, one was discharged last night. We had one that was in Critical Condition that went to surgery. We had two more stable patients that also required surgery. We have there is still six still left in the hospital. Were hoping to be able to send home two of them today. But im expecting all of them will fully recover. Ill be happy to take any questions. Can you please tell us are you prepared to tell us the same person, can you comment . We do not know if it is the same person. We did our database check and could not positively identify him. Were going back, scrubbing the information, looking at it again. But im not willing to say at this time it was the same person. Specifically targeted, is there any indication that someone was specifically targeted that started all of this . Not at this time, but thats a possibility. As i said earlier, the fbi, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and broward Sheriffs Office will be working to interview as many people as we can so down the road we can uncover this information. But at that time thats just right now it is no more than a possibility. Do you know how he entered the building . How he got in . We will speak about that, we know about that. And at our next press conference as i said i will take the media through a timeline and talk about videotapes, well match up video with real time information, things we know and well zdisseminate that. [ inaudible ] what can you tell us about how my understanding is that it was legally purchased. Were not going to release that until later today. If we do at all today. Thats something that alcohol, tobacco and firearms, those investigators are trying to track down. The history of this weapon. We believe we know where the weapon was purchased, where the weapon came from. But thats being pieced together. So that will be something that we will discuss when at the appropriate time. Shooting last year, now this tragic shooting, what can you tell the people of Broward County . As i said, i talk about this all the time, it is not a phrase, it is not a term, it is the way we have to live our lives in circa 2018. If we see something, we need to Say Something. If that neighbor comes home every friday at 4 00 and he or she is always carrying a grocery bag and has milk and eggs sticking out and the last two fridays they went to a different maybe a range and came back with bullets in the bag on fridays, thats a change in behavior, thats different, thats something we need to know about. Youre our eyes and ears. One Community Member who sees something could do more in a one minute phone call than sometimes Law Enforcement can do in a period of months. If you know anybody, right now, if you know anybody, youre saying, you know what, this raises a red flag, i was thinking of calling, dont think of calling us, call us. Call the fbi. Call the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, call the broward Sheriffs Office, but if you have a if there is something in your gun, tht, somg is not right with this person, this person has the capabilities in my mind to do this or do that, please dont remain silent, please let us know about it. All the way back toed my school, had a disciplinary record, what was done about it . People knew for years already. [ inaudible ] you know, as a school district, we have to protect the privacy of our students. So i cant go into much detail at all about the students record and personal information. I will tell you that it was a former student, at stoneman douglas. Because of issues that arose here, he was transferred to another school within the county. Again, im not privileged to provide that information at the moment. But it is a student that we have been providing support for and recognize that there certainly were challenges there. The specifics i cant get into. As far as the student coming on campus, the this particular individual came on the campus, at the time of this missile and that is a fairly open time for the campus and he entered the facility at that moment. So thats having been enrolled in the school so let me just say this, when we have students within our care in the district, we provide the services that we can provide them. This is bigger than just the school system. Our kids are out of our schools two thirds of the time that theyre up. We need a Community Wide approach to help in our students with challenges and Mental Health concerns and so, again, we have got to invest resources to make sure that we minimize the occurrence of this ever happening again because if we dont, it is not a matter of if, it is going to be when. So was there a psychological trigger with this student for this event . No idea. We have there are some bodies still in the school. There is a medical right now the focus of the fbi and the broward Sheriffs Office is on the successful prosecution of this killer. And were not going to leave any stone unturned. Were trying to process this as quickly as we can. But vme is involved, investigators are involved, there is science dna and a whole plethora of things and we want to go fast. But were in the going to rush it. Were going to get it right before we get it fast and thats whats going on right now. They were concerned about a classmate, is there a protocol or some you have to im sure there is. He wasnt enrolled. There is a process. They can get a hold of teachers, guidance counselors, parents, make anonymous calls to crime stoppers, if somebody knows something, there is certainly ample way to say yes. Governor scott, is there a way we had a School Resource deputy, deputy peterson, on campus and he was armed. He never encountered at this point the only thing i can tell you definitively he never encountered cruz. Conversation about how to prevent Something Like this from happening, does that real conversation include gun control . Can you say thats something that youll look into . Two things i want to focus on, when i have this conversation next week with state leaders is that were going to focus on school safety, and thats going to focus on dollars, going to focus on Mental Health, dollars, going to focus on what are the things we can do with regard to school safety, and on top of that, we have to think about this, if somebody is mentally ill, they should not have access to a gun. So i want to focus on both of those things, i already have spoken to the speaker of the house, and their receptive to have this conversation about school safety. All of us have children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, none of us want anything like this to happen again. Let me also Say Something, i should Say Something earlier. [ speaking Foreign Language ] governor, first question refocus is this a diagnosis or this something that is i think it is a pretty good assumption to start out with. How would they be different from the conversation right. Lets remember this, first off, pulse was a terrorist attack. And after pulse, we put i asked for money and legislature supported adding more counterterrorism experts through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. We did that. We added 46 additional counterterrorism experts and we did that. In this case, what we have to think about is all of our schools have to be safe. It is as simple as that. How do we do that . It is going to be funding. It is going to be is there both for security, for Mental Illness, for counselors, things like that. On top of that, we got to say to ourselves if we have somebody is mentally ill, they cant have access to a gun. So look, im open to having a conversation about things because i dont want my children, your children, my grandchildren, your grandchildren, ever, anything to have to go through this. I also i also we have out here today, im flanked by many of our school board members, our elected officials on the school board, dr. Rosalynn osgood, dr. Cornyn, a host of others, we appreciate them being out here. Were going to make sure theyre part of the conversations too because they deeply care about their students and this community so im glad to see them here today. Few more questions. Were not going to release anything we said to detectives. If it was if he legally owned a gun, we cant do anything about arresting him for having a gun because you said legally. We could follow up, we could visit him. Whether he legally owns a gun or not, if we think a red flag goes up and that there is something not right and we think that this person has a propensity to do such a horrific act, i think police all over this nation need to be empowered to take that person and medically deliver him to a medical or a medical facility where they can be examined. Thank you for your time. Well be back in about an hour. Im jake tapper. Youve been watching a News Conference from the Broward County Sheriffs Office including other officials from the state of florida. We learned that all families who lost loved ones in yesterdays horrific shooting have been notified. The shooters First Court Appearance is scheduled to be later today at 2 00 p. M. Eastern. At any moment, were expecting President Trump to address the nation. Hell be speaking publicly for the first time on yesterdays massacre at a florida high school. Cnns jeff zeleny standing by at the white house. Jeff what are we expecting the president to say. We are going to hear from the president. The fourth such time hes delivered a speech after a major shooting in america. I am told by a white house official that the president is going to call for a plan that works, not just makes us feel better. But im told hes likely going to leave it there, not give specifics on gun policy. That is no surprise. In the wake of the shootings last fall, in las vegas, in the texas shooting as well, the president said that was not the time to talk about a gun policy. And, in fact, the white house has not talked about gun policy since then. Republicans on capitol hill have not talked about gun policy since then. Today i am told the president is going to issue a grieving speech saying his heart and thoughts, of course, are with the victims in florida. This has become sadly a rite of job of the president. President trump, told, im told will call for a plan that works, not just makes us feel better. Jake . Jeff zeleny at the white house, thanks so much. I want to bring in david chalian, dana bash and David Axelrod, who was an adviser to president obama. Dana, no statement from the president last night, the white house said they wanted to wait until they had more facts available. Is the president , do you think, in this speech going to attempt to con the consolar in chief role we have seen too many president s have to do after horrific acts of violence like this. Likely that is what he is going to try to do. It is the unfortunate job of the president , any president , to do that at times like this. He hasnt given a formal statement, but he has been on twitter. And he talked about the gunman being mentally disturbed. That is his opinion. It is not something that this gunman as far as we know was formally destinati lly diagnosee that would potentially change the course of events according to our evan perez who sees that this suspect got this assault weapon legally. Perfectly legally. And as much as he doesnt want to potentially, you know, start the ball rolling on questions about gun violence, and good gun rights, which come up every single time understandably, this happens. When you talk about the mental state and you talk about red flag after red flag after red flag, the question is already being asked and needs to be asked, why could this gunman, this suspect, get this assault weapon legally . We heard special agent from the fbi talking about that youtube posting that somebody with the same name as the shooter last year posted about wanting to be a professional School Shooter. The fbi special agent saying that the fbi looked into it and could not find the person. But he posted here is President Trump walking out. Well talk more about this after. Lets listen to President Trump. My fellow americans, today i speak to a nation in grief. Yesterday a school filled with innocent children and caring teachers became the scene of terrible violence, hatred, and evil. Around 2 30 yesterday afternoon, Police Responded to reports of gunfire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in parkland, florida, a great and safe community. There a shooter, who is now in custody, opened fire on defenseless students and teachers. He murdered 17 people and badly wounded at least 14 others. Our entire nation, with one heavy heart, is praying for the victims and their families. To every parent, teacher and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do, to ease your pain. We are all joined together as one American Family and your suffering is our burden also. No child, no teacher, should ever be in danger in an american school. No parent should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kiss them goodbye in the morning. Each person who was stolen from us yesterday had a fuel lifull d of them, a life full of wondrous beauty and unlimited potential and promise. Each one had dreams to pursue, love to give and talents to share with the world. And each one had a family to whom they meant everything in the world. Today we mourn for all of those who lost their lives. We comfort the grieving and the wounded. And we hurt for the entire community of parkland, florida that is now in shock and pain and searching for answers. To Law Enforcement, First Responders, and teachers who responded so bravely in the face of danger, we thank you for your courage. Soon after the shooter, i spoke with Governor Scott to convey our deepest sympathies to the people of florida and our determination to assist in any way that we can. I also spoke with Florida Attorney general pam bondi and Broward County sheriff scott israel. Im making plans to visit parkland, to meet with families and local officials and to continue coordinating the federal response. In these moments of heartache and darkness, we hold on to golds word in scripture, i have heard your prayer and seen your tears, i will heal you. We trust in that promise and we hold fast to our fellow americans and their time of sorrow. I want to speak now directly to americas children, especially those who feel lost, alone, confused or even scared. I want you to know that you are never alone and you never will be. You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you. If you need help, turn to a teacher, a family member, a local Police Officer, or a faith leader. Answer hate with love, answer cruelty with kindness. We must also Work Together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life that creates deep and meaningful human connections and that turns classmates and colleagues into friends and neighbors. Our administration is working closely with local authorities to investigate the shooting and learn everything we can. We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of Mental Health. Later this month, i will be meeting with the nations governors and attorneys general where making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority. It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference, we must actually make that difference. In times of tragedy, the bonds that sustain us are those of family, faith, community and country. These bonds are stronger than the forces of hatred and evil and these bonds grow Even Stronger in the hours of our greatest need. And so always, but especially today, let us hold our loved ones close, let us pray for healing and for peace, and let us come together as one nation to wipe away the tears and strive for a much better tomorrow. Thank you, and god bless you all. Thank you very much. Brief remarks from President Trump speaking at the white house offering consolation, talking about the need for prayer, for families speaking directly to the children of the nation saying that there is someone there for you, there are people who love you, he said i speak to a nation in grief. Lets bring back the panel. David chalian, President Trump in terms of an attempt to talk about what needs to happen to stop these horrific incidents that we keep saying that were going on in this country before President Trump and we have seen others since he took office, you talked about the need for secure schools, and he talked about the need to tackle the difficult issue of Mental Health. Which was echoing exactly what we heard from the governor of florida rick scott where republicans will start rallying around here. It was clear that his remarks were much more focused on the consoler in chief role than the action role. That was a choice. He had to make in this leadership moment of which way to go. It didnt seem he wanted to do too much of both. He really wanted to focus on just expressing his condolences. That doesnt sound to me that thats a sort of real plan to go forward. I dont know, you know what that means in terms of action, that could have prevented future moments like this. It did not seem to be that the president chose this moment to rally the country behind a path forward of how to prevent this from happening in the future. I agree with your general observation that it was similar to what the governor of florida rick scott said, except with one difference. Governor scott said in addition to school safety, that there needs to be a way to keep guns out of the hands of people who have Mental Health issues. President trump did not say anything about guns. Just talked about tackling the difficult issue of Mental Health. Let me read the president s tweet from this morning that dana bash you alluded to earlier today. He said, so many signs that the Florida Shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior, neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem, must always report such instances to authorities, again and again. Let me bring in David Axelrod. The president in that tweet seemed to be suggesting that the school neighbors and friends of the shooter could have or should have done more. But as far as i know right now, i dont know anything that the shooter did before the shooting that would have required any sort of adjudication as to his Mental Health status. Thats true, jake. We dont know all the details of what it was that got him transferred out of that school, the School Superintendent there was unable to bound not to reveal all of those details and the press conference today. We dont know the answer to that. Let me make a few general points, one is i think that part of the job of the president is to console the country. And i think that the president did a pretty good job there of saying the things that one would want a president to say. It is what he didnt say that is going to raise questions again. We have experienced three of the greatest mass murders in modern history in the last five months. We had 18 School Shootings just since the first of the year. This is an epidemic. And it is not enough to say we are going to focus on the issue of Mental Health. This is a common link between a lot of these crimes. But the other link are weapons of mass destruction. Assault weapons, weapons that allow people to kill massive numbers of people in an instant. And the ready availability of these weapons is an issue for this country. If the president of the United States wants to address the children of this country and say we will do anything we tv anything and everything to protect you as he just did, then he has to address this issue and he hasnt yet and he hasnt shown any inclination to do that. And we go through this pattern where people say, where we hear, we dont want to talk about that now because people are grieving and then time passes. And nothing happens. And then we go through the whole exercise again. At some point, at some point, people have to say, enough, we really do need to address this issue. We cant turn away. The question is does the president have the courage to break with the gun lobby core constituency of his on this issue. I want to bring in jeff zeleny and jeff, there is an obvious nexus here of people with serious Mental Health issues. And their ability to purchase weapons that allow somebody to kill the greatest number of people in the shortest amount of time. The governor of florida rick scott seemed to be suggesting that thats an area that they need to look at. But we didnt hear that from President Trump. We did not hear that from President Trump or the word gun or gun policy at all. I think thats not a surprise. Hes not made this a priority. He was not talking about this at all. It is interesting, as we have been talking about, as dane wa david have been talking about this, this is a familiar pattern here. A shooting and the american president addresses the country. President trump has been on both sides of this issue. Before he became the president of the United States, he actually called the nra out for saying they have too much control over republicans in washington, in congress. And he was running for president , he received the most money than any candidate from the nra. He has changed positions. He is the different quotient, hes the different person in this very familiar gun debate. Will he step up and take a stand and encourage a conversation on this, based on his speech here and the diplomatic reception room, i think the answer is probably not or no. He did not address that and there is no white house official that i have talked to since this tragedy happened on wednesday afternoon who wants to talk about gun policy. It is always never the right moment. There is not a White House Briefing today, but if there was, i suspect the answers would be it is not the right moment to talk about this. We will see if anything comes of this, probably not from the white house, jake. And the question is if we followed the governors lead on this and try to figure out how to keep guns out of the hands of people with Mental Health issues, how does one go about doing that . This shooter had not been adjudicated to have any Mental Health issues. He was displaying some, and he had been kicked out of the school, he had depression since his mother died according to the family that had taken him in. He had been seeing a Mental Health expert according to the Broward County but there was nothing there to put him on a list that says you cant have a gun. 19 years old, not allowed to buy a drink, not allowed to have a beer, but able to buy a gun. Thats a great point. The question is how does one define Mental Health issues. You talked about some of the red flags, looking at a story here that says his mother before she passed away in november would resort to calling the police to have them come to their house to try to talk some sense into him. We obviously have now heard the story according to buzzfeed that he in fact put a post, a comment on a Youtube Video saying he wants to be a professional School Shooter, if somebody does that, why on earth is that not a a giant red flag or an absolutely, you know, big x on the ability to get a gun. And the youtube account holder actually reported that to the fbi, the fbi special agent in charge in miami saying that they could not identify the person, even though the shooter had posted that on youtube under his exact name. The speaker of the house, paul ryan, just moments ago, talked about this School Shooting. Here is what he had to say. We also just thank god for Law Enforcement, the heroes of the school. I just want to offer this, there are a lot of worries that come with being a parent of teenagers. We got three of them. But this is this is the nightmare. This is pure evil. For these kids, yesterday should have just been Typical High School day. In an instant this became the worst day of their lives. You know, i was looking at this, this morning, i go back to this message that one of the students sent to her mom, she said if i dont make it, i love you, and i appreciate everything you did for me. All that fear, that terror, for her to think of love and gratitude for her parents, we can learn a lot from our kids. One of those moments we need to step back and count our blessings, need to think less about taking sides and fighting each other politically and just pulling together. This house, the whole country, stands with the parkland community. Im going to take some questions, but we started late here, ill be a little brief, i got to get upstairs to the chair. So chad. When you talk about not taking sides, minority leader a few moments ago and was critical of their demands, their requests to have a select committee on gun violence, action on background checks, criticized your leadership for saying they the response to their sitin 2016 is was to investigate who was periscoping. What use is that for taking the side youre referring to . As you know, Mental Health is often a big problem underlying these tragedies. That may be the case here today based on earlier reporting. We passed legislation on Mental Health. We want to make sure that if someone is in the Mental Health system they dont get a gun, theyre not supposed to get a gun. Well find out as facts come out if there was a breakdown in the system here today. We passed legislation cleaning up the instant check background check system. That bill with others is sitting over the United States senate. So if there is someone who is not supposed to get a gun, getting a gun, we have to figure out why that is happening and fix that. Thats a legislation thats a piece of legislation we passed in the senate. One thing we know is there are early indications, for Mental Illness, i think we probably have to do a better job of trying to make sure that people dont get slip through the cracks. Mr. Speaker, should Law Enforcement be able to confiscate a weapon from someone who has limited signs of Mental Illness . Like i said before, this is not the time to jump to some conclusion not knowing the full facts. We have a lot more information we need to know. But if someone who is mentally ill is sleeping through the cracking and getting a gun because we have laws on the books. We have a system to prevent people who arent supposed to get guns from getting guns and if there are gaps there, we need to look at those gaps. Thats like the legislation we passed fixing the next system. Mr. Speaker, why wont you support or allow hearings to move forward on background checks . What is your resistance to that . The fix nicks bill does fix the background checks system. Remember the shooting in texas. There was a man who had been convicted in the air force of domestic violence, he wasnt supposed to get a gun, yet the air force didnt give the records to the instant check system and he got a gun. Thats one of the reasons why we passed legislation plugging that loophole, making sure that was the case. So that came from hearings. We had hearings on the gaps in the instant check system and those hearings led to a conclusion that there were gaps that need to be fixed and that led to legislation that has been passed by the house. The question i think is so youre saying that obviously we need to look into if there are gaps. The attorney general said there is problems we got to address. Something is not right. Would you consider a select committee, whatever you call it, on this issue in. I think congress should do its job. And we passed Mental Health legislation two years ago because of the underlying Mental Health problems that were behind these shootings. That legislation is now just taking place. That legislation is now being implemented. We, from earlier reportings, understand there may be some Mental Health issues with this shooting. So the question is are those laws, where they need to be, is it being implemented properly, are they being enforced correctly. We do have law on the books, designed to prevent people with Mental Illnesses from getting firearms. The question is, just like the texas instance, are those laws working the right way, are their loopholes that need to be plugged . We found some loopholes that need to be plugged. Would you consider moving legislation, a stand alone bill or our bills insisting on preventions that were sought by the our bill is in the senate, and hopefully the senate can pass something, well meet them in conference like the regular legislative process. Thats something that is in the senate, well see if the senate can get to conference and figure out what we can do from there. That was House Speaker paul ryan talking just moments ago about the horrific shooting in florida. You might recall about 130 days or so ago after the las vegas shooting, 58 innocent people were mao mowed down there was a of debate about a bump stock, a tool that somebody could purchase, allowing them to turn a semiautomatic gun, which requires every time you want to fire a bullet to pull the trigger each time, turning it from that into an automatic gun so you can hold it down and it would do rapid fire. Paul ryan, who is an avid hunter and sportsman, said he hadnt even heard of a bump stock and talked about the need for congress to do away with the fact that these are legally sold. Dana bash, you Cover Congress quite a bit. That was more than 130 days ago. That las vegas shooting, one of the deadliest in american history. Where are we on this closing this loophole that speaker ryan said at the time he was in favor of closing . Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Despite the fact that there was very widespread bipartisan support for closing the loophole on the bump stocks, even the nra, which opposes pretty much anything with that would suggest tightening the grip on allowing people to get guns, they put out a statement insisting they would be okay with closing that loophole. But it hasnt gone anywhere. They said they supported it, but they didnt. Exactly. They said they did, it was the in terms of pr, the right thing to do. But at the end because there was so much pressure at that time, but i think it goes back to what David Axelrod was saying, in the moments and days and maybe even the weeks after these tragedies, there is so much sunshine on this issue, there is so much pressure on these lawmakers to do something, and unfortunately in the world in which we live, there is so much news, so much so many other things on their plate, that they have the ability to brush it aside and in the deal with it if that pressure is not on them. And that, i really fundamentally believe is what happened. And maybe also some public support from places like the nra and some private, you know, you dont really have to do this right now. I will say you pointed out, there was a story in the l. A. Times that said even though federally congress hasnt acted, there has been some states around the country that have acted on Something Like bump stocks. What is just made clear here, washington has proven time and time again to be totally incapable of doing something on this issue significantly to actually prevent it from happening obviously because it continues to happen in all sorts of different ways. Bump stocks not part of this scenario. Not that we know of. Until so hearing paul ryans words, hearing the president s words, i agree with david, those are necessary words for the country to hear from our leaders. No doubt about it. Theyre not sufficient. Theyre necessary and not sufficient. And so what until and unless there is a leader moment, i believe it has to come from the president , any president , right now this president , President Trump, who is willing to break free of the tv as youre saying, the Interest Groups or where a Political Base may be, this is a really polarizing issue in america. The parties are largely quite split over gun ownership rights, versus gun control. This requires a certain level of leadership from the top that breaks all of that politics and actually leads has to be a leader who is a republican. As you know, you covered barack obama and he did try after ignoring it for a while, he did try and was not successful. Dana bash, thanks so much. Still ahead, im going to speak with the man who says he alerted the fbi as to the suspected High School Shooter last year, posting something horrific on a youtube account. Stay with cnn. Well be right back. Touch is how we communicate with those we love, but when your psoriasis is bad, does it ever get in the way . Embrace the chance of 100 clear skin with taltz. Taltz is proven to help people with moderate to severe psoriasis achieve completely clear skin. With taltz, up to 90 of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. In fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. Dont use if youre allergic to taltz. Before starting, you should be checked for tuberculosis. 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Our next guest says he contacted the fbi last fall after seeing a disturbing comment left on one of his Youtube Videos. The comment said, im going to be a professional School Shooter. The users name nikolas cruz, same name and same unique spelling as the School Shooting suspect. Ben bennight is here to share his story. He joins us by phone. Walk us through what you first did when you saw the comment that was posted . When i saw the comment come through my push notifications and youtube studio, it caught my attention. So i screen shotted it so i can share it with fbi. I reported it to youtube as spam. And, of course, when you do that, they take the comment down. And then i contacted the fbi. And how did the fbi respond . They responded pretty immediately. They i had a field agent contact me and meet me at my office the next morning. He sent down the information. So we just heard from the fbi special agent in charge, i think, in miami talking about this report and the fact that you had reported it to the fbi. This fbi special agent rob lasky at that press conference in Broward County actually, we have that sound bite. Were going to play that for you. Lets listen. In 2017 the fbi received information about a comment made on a youtube channel. The comment simply said, im going to be a professional School Shooter. No other information was included with that comment which would indicate a time, location or the true identity of the person who made the comment. The fbi conducted data base reviews, checks, but was unable to further identify the person who actually made the comment. Ben, your response to the fbi there today talking about how they were not able to identify the person who posted that. Well, i think in todays online world it is very difficult to narrow down who does what without more information, and unfortunately, i wasnt able to provide them with much. You gave them the users name, right, which is the same exact name as the shooter . I did. I did. And i dont know what the process is to go through these companies to get specific user information. I have to say, though, the fbi is saying they were not able to ascertain who this was when there is an individual obviously with the exact same name, and if they had done any searching, they would have likely been able to find out that the person had been kicked out of the school. It does seem to beg it does seem to prompt more questions than answers. Well, thats true. Im sure that im sure had more time and effort been put into finding out who the user name belongs to, if thats even possible, i dont know how many Nikolas Cruzes there are, they could have put him on the radar. It doesnt seem like they conducted an exhaustive search. But you actually did the responsible thing. You found something and reported it and the fbi in your neck of the woods seemed to take it seriously. Sadly t doesn sadly, it doesnt appear it went much farther than that. Thank you for your time today. Thank you. I want to bring in a panel of experts we have with us. The new york state security homeland director, and analyst and secret Service Agent and former fbi special agent. Josh, i want to start with you. This doesnt look particularly good for the fbi. Jake, this is the nightmare scenario as an investigator. When youre conducting an investigation, youre asking themselves, is there something in our holding, something that we collected that could have saved lives . I know the fbi will do an exhaustive review and go back and look after the act and see what was the process, is there something we could have done differently. Heres the truth about investigations in the United States of america. The fbi is precluded from using certain fbi techniques. There is sort of a sliding scale. They have to start with the least intrusive method possible to conduct an investigation, which it sounds like they did here doing database searches. The gentleman you were just speaking with did exactly the right thing. Thats what we want people to do, but in the United States we cant go straight to electronic surveillance of a youtube account, for example. There is something the fbi has used and ive used in my investigations where you can go to a provider and serve them with an emergency disclosure letter where if you have some type of credible information that could stop a threat and save lives, sometimes, and again, its up to the individual company, its not actual legal process, but they can decide whether or not to provide that information to you. I know from experience it is an extremely high bar, and Something Like this that we saw, someone saying i want to be a School Shooter i dont think would pass that threshold in order to get the information without some type of court order. Mr. Balboni, am i engaging in 20 20 hindsight here . Is it unfair to expect that the fbi, when seeing a youtube post about somebody wanting to be a School Shooter, posting under his actual name that there would be a more exhaustive search as to who posted it . That was the only threat they had that day, that month, of course, you should be able to get it. Its a question of resources. How much manpower do you have to be able to chase down on all these threats. I assure you there are threats around the country on various topics, whether its Airport Security or schools or any other thing you can imagine. But the question really then becomes suppose they did everything right. Suppose they identified this individual and they had an agent go and conduct a field interview. What if the guy said, i was just kidding. You know, i didnt really mean that. Or if he said, yeah, you know, im kind of im worried about a lot of things. What would the next steps be . We do not have a preventive detention law in the United States. He has not done anything wrong even by posting that kind of hard sentiment. So the question really becomes, what should be the Law Enforcement response . And the question is so frustrating for everybody. It comes down to the school, to the community. What happens there is the only place youre really going to effectuate a prevention of this type of an attack. So, jonathan, what should the school have done, if anything . Listen, jake, just take a step back for one second. Youre highlighting an issue thats very difficult for Law Enforcement, is how do you ascertain from an online threat or threatening statements the means, opportunity and intent for somebody to cause harm, and then really try to predict the future . Are they going to act upon this . What are the next steps . Looking at this situation today, you know, what we need to do as a society is not look at this from one optic. It cant be a Law Enforcement optic or a Health Provider optic or an education optic. We need to start looking at this, all these data points, and start siner ja synergizing them to try to ascertain what the threat really is. So this was an online post. Law enforcement, lets say in a perfect scenario, they go to the house, they confront the individual and he says, yeah, you know what, i did make those statements. What are they going to do now . Are they going to take his guns . All of a sudden you start infringing on first and Second Amendment rights here. Again, this is a complex problem, but collectively the community has to come together to solve for it. All right, michael, jonathan and josh, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Thanks for joining me. We have much more on breaking news. Inside politics with job king starts after a quick break and ill be back at 4 30 eastern on the lead. Thanks for watching. You stopped smoking. Now start screening. No matter how much you smoked, Early Detection could save you. Talk to your doctor or learn more at savedbythescan. Org can start in the colon constiand may be signs of an imbalance of good bacteria. Only Phillips Colon Health has this unique combination of probiotics. It provides fourinone symptom defense. Its your daily probiotic. A whole new concept in skin say heldefense. Etox new absolutely ageless®. Pretox day mask from aveeno®. Its powerful antioxidant formula. Fights pollution and keeps skin looking younger, longer. Aveeno®. I was wondering if an electric toothbrusthan a manual. S better and my hygienist says it does but theyre not all the same. Who knew . I had no idea. So she said, look for one thats shaped like a dental tool with a round brush head. Go pro with oralb. Oralbs rounded brush head surrounds each tooth to gently remove more plaque. And unlike sonicare, oralb is the only electric toothbrush brand accepted by the American Dental Association for its effectiveness and safety. My mouth feels so clean. Ill only use an oralb. Oralb. Brush like a pro. Ftheres flonase sensimist. F up around pets. It relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills dont. And all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. Flonase sensimist. Welcome to inside politics. Im john king. Thank you for sharing your day with us. It is a sad day trying to make sense of something senseless. 17 people gunned down at a florida high school. I want to take you to the senate in a moment of silence for the victims in parkland yesterday. The senate will observe a moment of silence for the victims of the florida School Shooting