[cheers and applause] remember when i first started running because i wasnt a politician, fortunately, but do you remember i started running and people say are you sure he is a conservative . I think now we proved that im a conservative. Dont be complacent. Dont be complacent. Because if they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts. They will put judges in that you wouldnt believe. They will take away your second amendment, which we will never allow to happen. They will take away your second amendment. [cheers and applause] no president has ever cut so many regulations in their entire term. Okay . As we have cut in less than a year. [cheers and applause] and its my opinion that the regulations had as big an impact as these massive tax cuts that we have given. So i really believe that we officially recognize jerusalem as the capital of israel. [cheers and applause] the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats have totally abandoned daca. They have they dont even talk to me about it its very possible that daca wont happen and its not because of the republicans. Its because of the democrats. And frankly, you better elect more republicans, folks, or it will never happen. I appreciate everything you have done. I do want to say because people have asked, north korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. [cheers and applause] what a nice picture that is look at that i would love to watch that guy speak. [laughter] [cheers and applause] oh, i try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks. I work hard at it. [cheers and applause] doesnt look bad, hey, we are hanging. In we are hanging in there, right . Together we are hanging in. Martha all right. Joining me mee now town hall. Com editor guy benson and charlie hurt a once never trumper and an always trumper. Charlie, very interesting to look back, you know, to just a couple years ago when he was a candidate. He was not even really allowed to go there and speak. Absolutely. And to be sure it was a hostile takeover in the months and year after that cpac when he was not able to come here. But, you know, when you look back to the past 20 years, conservatives and republicans had spent so many elections putting investing everything in either principled conservative or partisan loyal republicans and we just wound up either losing races or with more and more sort of liberal tax and spend policies. And i think that finally conservatives got frustrated and said, you know, we will take a flier on this guy. And they did and when you look back at the past year, i think that it is perfectly legitimate to say that were looking at, perhaps, the most conservative victories that we have had certainly since reagan and, perhaps even farther back than that. Martha guy, you were definitely in that camp a couple years ago that did not want him to be the guy in that nominating process. What do you think when you watch him go through that litany of what he is calling his accomplishments . Would you be cheering in that crowd there today . I would have clapped along to a lot of what he said. Maybe not all of it. But, look, some of my concerns, martha, when he was running for president remain today. And they deal with his character. They deal with his comportment. But, one of the questions that was open was would he govern as a conservative. I was concerned. I had my doubts. And on many occasions over the last year he has assuaged a number of those doubts. So i try to take what he has done on a piecemeal basis and when he is right he is right and i say so. And he went through the checklist judges, tax cuts, deregulation, israel, isis. A lot of positive things in the first year from a policy perspective. But, you know, its not like he has totally sold me. Im not always trump. Im sometimes trump. Martha you know, he basically has two groups that he is up against. He has conservatives within his own party and thats the first reference. Lets watch what he said about that group today. You know, we have a problem. We need more republicans. We have a group of people that vote against us in a block. Theyre good at two things. Resisting, obstruction. Resisting, obstruction. And they stick together. They do. They always vote in a block. Martha talking about the Freedom Caucus there, charlie . Yeah. I think so. But, you know, one of the things that i think is very appealing about the Trump Presidency is as guy said, you know, is he a sometimes trumper. And having those divisions laid out in public where public openly criticize one another within the republican party, you know, parties tonight like that. This is the sort of thing politicians hate that kind of discord. I think its a refreshing honesty. I think a lot of people who are sick and tired of politics, fed up of all the politicians, they see this open disagreement among people who are in the same party and they kind of admire it. It reminds them of their own family, perhaps, and certainly it makes for a very honest debate where everything is everyone is allowed to say what they think and then you arrive at actually a pretty sensible solution to something. Martha front page story this week on the New York Times about how some of his biggest critics within his party have been coming around. Martha mcsally, dean heller mentioned in those piece. Bob corker apparently is trying to mend some fences and figure out whether or not he wants to run for his senate seat again. And this is somebody who, you know, called the white house a Day Care Center and said that the attendant was obviously missing, guy. Yeah, so i on corker i dont think thats going to be a move that works well for him if he decides to reverse his decision to retire. I think his likely opponent in that race, Marsha Blackburn has a big lead on him and would probably enjoy the support of most tennessee republicans. But to the broader point that you brought up in the New York Times and some of the critics coming around, when a president wins, and is now the most powerful person on earth, and he is from your party, it behooves you in many cases to find ways to come together and get on his team because in some ways he is a blank slate. I dont think he is an ideological conservative at heart. But, getting his ear and convincing him of things when he is the decisionmaker is something that i think is, you know, of a political instinct comes out. And it makes sense for a lot of people in the party. Even critics. Even skeptics to try to rally to him. Martha its interesting because is he not overly ideological and because he can be swayed by events and i think thats really what we saw this week. Very extraordinary listening sessions at the white house where they opened themselves up to raucous debate right there in the middle of the white house. I thought it was interesting. Charlie, the idea that because of his positioning politically he has the ability to give cover to republicans, do you think he will go to the mat mat on this issue . Will he fight against some things that the nra doesnt want and some things that the other side doesnt want and get for the first time some kind of comprehensive deal that maybe has some changes in gun laws and also changes in things Like Mental Health and School Protection . I think that he will fight for it i think he will fight for it exactly the way we have seen it play out. He is not going to let the left or cnn hijack the debate and do it their way. He is going to compete with them every single day and say okay, can you have your minutes of fame there at night but were going to have our listening session and people are going to compare the two and they are going to see who is actually trying to reach a good, sensible decisions. And i dont like all the decisions. When you go through the gun things and i care a lot about guns, when you go through the things he has listed i dont like all those things. But i have to say i admire the fact its not partisan. Its not knee jerk. Its not talking points. Is he actually listening. And, you know, at one point somebody in one of the meetings brought up the live Shooter Training and he just dumped on her for like two minutes about how what a terrible idea that was. You felt sorry for the woman because she meant well. It was an honest conversation about it and he made some very good points about how little children probably shouldnt be forced to go through live training shooter drills. Martha and they are all the time. March very interesting. Both to see you and enjoy the music in the back, charlie. Thanks, martha. Martha thank you, guys. The democrats and the nra versus the president on whether people with Mental Health issues should be banned from having guns and we now know that the government failed the parkland students, when you think about it, literally at every turn. And remember the all 17 intel agreed awsh was in the 2016 election. Everyone bought into that number. Now we are taking a closer look and it may not be true. We know as a result of 17 intelligence agencies that russia tried to undermine our election process. 17. 17 intelligence agencies all concluded that these espionage attacks, these Cyber Attacks come from the highest levels of the kremlin. Dads dont take sick days. Dads take dayquil severe. The nondrowsy, coughing, aching, fever, sore throat. Stuffy head, no sick days medicine. Yeah, i thought so, too, but Rocket Mortgage gave me control of the mortgage process. I lowered my term and found a payment that fit my budget all from my phone. Can i see . What do you think . Oh, do i have a little. . Rocket mortgage by quicken loans. Get approved in as few as 8 minutes. The thing that make me so angry in part of this debate that does get framed largely from my republican colleagues is that is a Mental Health issue. When it comes down to Mass Shootings the vast majority of them are not perpetrated by people suffering from Mental Illness. Martha joe kennedy on Mental Illness and school shooters. We really do have to strengthen up. Really strengthen up background checks. We have to do that. We have to do for the mentally ill. We dont want people that are mentally ill to be having any form of weaponry. We have to be very strong on that. Martha this as the president faces growing questions about changes that he made to an obamaera rule on gun sales t to the mentally ill. Cbs cnn and others are reporting while the president says he wants to tackle the issue of Mental Health, he has actually made it easier for the mentally ill to get guns. Heres why. In the wake of the Sandy Hook School shooting in newtown connecticut president obama signed a regulation which never took effect that would have mandated that anybody with a mental disorder who receives Social Security benefits and needs help managing those benefits would automatically have their records sent to the fbis criminal background check system. We are talking about 75 to 80,000 people. Connecticut democratic senator chris murphy who represents newtown applauded the proposal saying at the time if you cant manage your money, how can you be responsible for a gun . But critics pointed out that these people were being forced to forfeit their second and Fourth Amendment rights, the right to bear arms and the right to due process not because of their actions but because the federal government classified them as a risk. Remember, the list of mental disorders include everything from depression and anxiety to eating and sleeping disorders media made it clear they were against obamas rule. Little mention that the American Civil Liberties union came out strongly against the regulation. At the time the aclu wrote in part quoting we oppose this rule because it advances and reinforces the harmful stereotype that people with mental disabilities, a vast and Diverse Group of citizens, are violent. The rule automatically con flights one disability related characteristic that is difficulty managing money with the inability to safely possess a firearm. Many in the g. O. P. Have noted you the government does have the power to deny someone a gun but it also has to show a pattern of behavior that makes it dangerous for them to have a weapon. Martha . Martha trace, thank you very much. Here now with more david wool attorney and search commentator and Michael Starr hopkins a democratic strategist who worked on both the obama and clinton campaigns. Welcome to both of you. Michael, let me start with you. What did you think about joe kennedys comment that this is not a Mental Health issue . I dont think that alone this is a Mental Health issue. I think here there were Mental Health components to it. This is complicated. This is an assault weapons issue. This is a Mental Health issue. This is also a governmental response issue. We saw the fbi had missteps. I think when we Start Talking about, this we should acknowledge its a complicated scenario we need to look at from different angles. Martha misleading for him to say its not usually part of the problem. Devin kelly as you tell ter lands spring. Church shooter. Dylan roo roof, navy yard shooter. Adam lanza, jason holmes in the aroar can a colorado movie theater. Jared lockner. To say this is not a big part of this issue i think undercuts, you know, serious part of what we are talking about here. And thats just somebody who hates guns and hate the second amendment, martha. Compare the two. What trump did was repeal law that dealt with people who received ssi payments, everything from as trace said anxiety or minor depression. Veterans who were suffering from ptsd without due process. No hearing. Their Constitutional Rights were stripped. Now, look at Young Nikolas cruz, repeated calls about his threats of violence. Repeated calls about his outofcontrol behavior. About his threats against schools, against students, about the fact that he had guns and he was going to use those guns to shoot up schools. Comparing those two concepts is they are not comparable. And the fact is that the Broward CountySheriffs Department should have taken action. They didnt take an action. There is no comparison between that and the issue of the ssi payments which the ssi issues which President Trump repealed and he did it the right way and he did the right thing. Martha you know, it seems to me that the government failed at every single level here. And you do see a lot of attention being leveled at the nra right now. But look, this is from ellison barber a reporter of ours in washington. She says the call to the fbi lasted more than 13 minutes before the tipster called the fbi she called officials in parkland. She didnt hear back from them. The more we hear from this. The delay on the videotape they thought they were looking at him in the building but he was already 20 minutes gone. Michael, he cant ask the government to solve solve these problems. One of the emergency room doctors who treated a lot of victims said had these been handgun injuries rather than ar15 many of these people would have survived. What we need to do is have a conversation about mitigating the damage done in shooting. When you have weapons of war on the street it, makes it more difficult for survivors to be able to overcome the situation. Martha david, why should we allow these weapons . Ralph peters, you know ralph peters. Is he a military guy. A colonel, he knows a lot about history and about warfare, he said there is no reap why these weapons should be in civilian hands. Weapons. Ralph is wrong. I have an ar15. I have a lot of the friends with ar15. We dont kill animals. Im going to a range tomorrow and enjoy them with my family. Thats what 98 of people who own ar15s do. The reality is tha the gun is a machine. The killer is the person. Without the crazy person. Without the person having evil intent, the gun cant do anything. Mental health has got to be dealt with. Martha i want to go back to Mental Health in a moment. One of the things that the president raised. He talked about something that perhaps is not talked about enough. We do not have the kind of Mental Health facilities in this country that we used to have. There were Mental Health institutions that got a lot of criticism and rightfully so. Some of these places were so horrific they had to be shut down. Now we have environment where people are sent home with medication and there are times where someone needs to be separated from their community because they are not safe. This young mans brother was forcibly institutionalized shortly after this happened, michael is that something we should see more of. It is. I would say over 95 it was cut out of the last budget we have to bring it back. We have to treat Mental Illness. One thing you have to understand when someone like here in california if you are 5150 involuntary 72hour hold, that shows up in criminal background check. You wont get a weapon in that shows up. Also conservativeship, civil adjudication of Mental Health. That shows up there are safeguards but we definitely need more. Martha one other thing, new red flag laws that states are adopting where a Family Member or the Law Enforcement can go to a court and say please take away my Family Members gun, right . On the phone with the fbi 1 minutes. Somebody is going to have to be held accountable. Otherwise i dont know what we are doing. Red flag laws something we have to look into more. Nice to see you tonight. Thank you,