to see that he s talking out of both sides of his mouth on this issue. you know, the reality here is law enforcement has almost uniformly believed for maybe as long as i was in the justice department over 25 years that universal background checks were sort of a no-brainer because right now if you buy a gun at a gun show or online or through a person-to-person transfer, there s no background check. and that s how a lot of the guns that get used in significant violent crimes are sold. so the house has a bill, hr 8 that would close those loopholes. there are also issues with how long it takes to do checks and with the law permitting sales to go throughthose checks aren t completed within the mandatory 72 hour period. but here again the president is at fault where he could have put resources into fbi and atf so that he could complete those background checks.
he thinks of his base is getting onboard. here he is. here is you how he put it. is your base supporting background checks. i think my base relies very much on common sense and the they rely on me in terms of telling them what s happening. so so he is right about that except for he told them one thing and then he didn t do it. now here he is 18 months later telling them the same thing. do they just not care or what? well, i mean, the question is, is he going to follow his base? is he going to follow the nra? is he going to follow what over 90% of american public wants, which are universal background checks, because if he really wants meaningful background checks he has an incredible opportunity to make that happen with hr 8 which passed the house of representatives in february with bipartisan support. so, you know, there is a great opportunity to do that. he has an opportunity to show the american people that he is serious about it.
i think we re also surprised to see he s talking out of both sides of his mouth on this issue. you know, the reality here is law enforcement has almost uniformly believed for many as long as i was in the justice department over 25 years that universal background checks were sort of a no brainer because right now if you buy a gun at a gunshow or online or through a person-to-person transfer, there s no background check. and that s how a lot of guns that get used in significant violent crimes are sold so the house has a bill, hr8, that would close those loopholes. there s also issues how long it takes to do checks and how long it takes for sales to go through if the checks are not completed within the mandatory 72-hour period. some states make it longer. here the president is at fault where he could have put the resources into fbi and atf so they could complete those background checks. instead those resources are
yet, nicolle, the polling is completely lopsided on this issue. 80%, 90% of americans think background checks is the way to go. they have thought that for years and yet nothing happened in washington. the president said today he wanted intelligent background checks, that s his word, intelligent. but it s not clear what that means. the devil will be in the details. what is this legislation? will it be the manchin-toomey bill of a few years bag that died in the senate of the obama presidency? will it be something different, perhaps something weaker that would be more appealing to the republicans in the senate. and it s unclear also how much momentum president trump is willing to put behind it. he said what he said at the white house but he said it as he was departing for a week-long vacation at hi gos golf club inw jersey. the senate is out for the entire month of august. it s not clear where the leadership and momentum to do something will come from in the next few days.
gordon, it appears to be a purge of decenters within the intelligence community which was dames point brid dangerous for a national community. i want to ask you about guns. no one is under the impression that mitch mcconnell is really looking to get to involve new background checks, assuming there is some space for discussions because there are five republican senators who are on the record as calling for background checks, legislation and i will show them into our viewers. assumes there are some space for discussions. what are you willing to compromise in order to get some meaningful legislation? as you know we passed hr 8 out of the house on a big vote. it went to the senate. i believe it should take up hra immediately. in terms of compromises, we really have to see what they want to do and what they want to do with hr 8.