18-year-old walk in, a 20-year-old and buy an ar-15. that s why back in 1994 i took on the nra and passed the assault weapons ban. for ten years mass shootings were down. ten years in a row. i was going to say i passed that legislation in 1994 as a senator. but in 2004 republicans let that ban expire. what happened? mass shootings in america tripled. it s time to ban these. it s time to ban these weapons. we did it before. we can do it again. [ applause ] it s time to hold every elected official s feet to the fire and ask them are you for banning assault weapons, yes or no? ask them. if the answer is no, vote against them. [ applause ] look, i m prouder that after seven years we finally had a senate confirm director of alcohol, tobacco and firearms responsible for fighting gun crimes, for seven years the other team would not let us appoint anyone to that job. incredibly important job to help local law enforcement, federal law enforcement identify the ballistics. a whole range
jonathan lemire, former chair of the republican national committee, michael steele, and columnist and associate editor for the washington post, david ignatius, thank you all for being with us. ben, i think we should start with you with your latest reporting, especially taking a deep dive into not only what depape was posting but the disinformation swirl that ensued. he was posting standard qanon, pizza gate, cabal stuff. the idea that the world is run by this new world order, and it is trying to censure you, and that nancy pelosi and people like that, those people in the qanon spaces right now, those people are at the top of that sphere. they are at the top of that pecking order when it comes to believing in conspiracy theories. i want to stress this. right now, trending on twitter, is the lie about this guy. it s the lie that it s trending. it s trending on twitter as we speak because elon musk
much allowed on that platform. it s important to remember, one of the first people to get through on january 6th, the person who sort of led the charge, was in a qanon shirt that day, because he thought he was seeing the storm. he thought he was, you know, it was all about to happen. he thought he was about to see people hanged, and he thought he was about to see the takeover of the government. that s what this is about. you know, one way or another, you don t have to believe in q to believe that the government needs to be taken over with pro-trump militias or other, like you just said, monarchist-style beliefs that donald trump is the very last president of the united states. in these spaces, pro-trump spaces, qanon spaces, they call him gotus, stands for god emperor of the united states. they view him as like a deity in these spaces, as a sort of last resort, their last ability to get back a culture that they have they believe they have lost that s largely based on white supremacy.