Longer. Well dig into that in a moment. We start this hour waiting for President Trump due to leave the white house any moment now. And if he talks to reporters, we may find out more on the president s thinking about his changing positions on changing this countrys gun laws. Tuesday the president appeared to be backing off, open to expanding background checks on gun buyers, the week after Mass Shootings after shootings in dayton and el paso, he seemed to be at odds with the nra. Now with a conversation with the nra chief, the administration and nra seem to be in lockstep. Lapierre tweeting on tuesday, quote, the president supports our right to keep and bear arms. Lets break it down with l. A. Times White House Reporter eli sokols, former deputy of state and spokesperson for Hillary Clinton is also with me. Eli, ill start with you. President trump 12 days ago said he was in disagreement with the nra, perhaps. Heres what he said then, and what he said on tuesday after that conversation with Wayne Lapierre. Look, the nra has over the years taken a very, very tough stance on everything. And i understand it. Its a slippery slope. They think you prove one thing and that leads to a lot of bad things. I dont agree with it. I think we can do meaningful, very meaningful background checks. A lots of the people that put me where i am are strong believers in the Second Amendment, i am also. We have to be very careful about that. They call it the slippery slope. All of a sudden everything gets taken away. Were not going to let that happen. We have seen this from the president before, eli. How do you know where the president actually stands on an issue . Its hard because hes often saying completely opposing and contradicting things. I was with the president the day that he traveled to dayton and el paso following the Mass Shootings in those cities. And he was, you know, expressing a lot of confidence. Not just publicly but privately to reporters on the plane on the way home that this was going to happen, that it was a done deal, that he could convince republicans and the nra and bring them along. That obviously was overstating the reality. Hed had conversations that day, im told, with Wayne Lapierre and those conversations have continued. For the president , he often says what he thinks he needs to say in the moment. You know, and this is why we as journalists mostly we Pay Attention to what he says but we have to watch what he actually does because a lot of times the things hes saying when hes seeing coverage of these Mass Shootings on television, they change when that coverage goes away. The salient of an issue corresponds with how much coverage its getting on television because the president is such an avid consumer of news in that form. And i think, you know, not just the conversations with Wayne Lapierre but, perhaps, he senses the urgency of this has waned a little bit who is allowing the president , who is obviously very concerned about not losing his base heading into reelection, a lot of those factors are credibilityi in contributing to what we saw yesterday and the president backing away from the notion of congress doing background checks with his support. I talked to senator chris murphy on this broadcast, democrat from connecticut, about the problems of getting Gun Legislation through. This is part of what senator murphy said to me. Theres in mythology in the Republican Party that if you cross the nra that you will lose a primary election or you will lose a general election against a democrat. Thats just not true. Its never been true. The nra has never been as powerful as republicans think they are. And today the nra is in absolute chaos. Youve been in the game a long time. If what senator murphy just said is true, that its an organization thats in chaos, how do we then explain the kind of control it seems to have over the legislate ty agenda . Well, i would say two things. Senator murphy brings up something interesting, which i think is a misunderstanding about the nra. For the longest time i thought the nra represented, you know, half the country. We always dumb every issue down to half republicans, half democrats. Thats not the case. The nra has fewer members than people realize. The numbers are not public. But their revenue is public. And based on some back of the envelope math, they seem to have several million members. Obviously, thats a lot of people. But the nra does not represent every gun owner in america. The reason thats important is because you see at moments like this that you have incredibly high acrosstheboard support for background checks. Whether its 92 among democrats, 89 among republicans. Same thing among independents. Those numbers are remarkable. We dont see that anymore. In terms of the nra being in chaos, look, i got to say, Wayne Lapierre just earned every penny of his crazy, you know, clothing and wardrobe budget, these millions theyre paying him for his home. He earned it in a 30minute phone call because, you know, i have to give a little an inch here in that donald trump is not a gun nut. I mean, hes a new york republican when it comes to guns. This is something that if people put a full press on him, something would happen. Instead, were going through the same cycle because, frankly, he has the Attention Span of a flea, but so do we. We keep having these same conversations every time theres a shooting. The nras real weakness is theyve lost their talking points going all the way back to parkland actually, to vegas. They no longer can say what they had said for years, which is that people would have gotten the guns anyway. In almost, i believe, every case or near every case in the last two or three years, the guns were purchased legally. The bump stocks, the incredibly strange large magazines. Until the moment these people open fire and started to shoot and kill people, they had not broken the law. And this notion that theres a slippery slope to background checks, to overturn, the Second Amendment, thats insane. The Second Amendment is never going anywhere. If were at a point where were opening the constitution to the Second Amendment, the Republican Party has a much bigger problem in terms of what we would go after for change. In the new york times, a colleague says the president desires adulation but also a recognition that turning out passionate supporters in 2020 may be a better route to a second term than trying to attract undecided voters. Whats the sense you get from covering this white house, eli . Does reelection, does it cover pretty much all of the policy decisions the president makes or does he not consider them a great deal . I think overall that is the strategy the president adopts and so does this campaign. Its a base election, you have to juice turnout. There are fewer undecided voters out there at this point. An issue like this, even though 90 of the country supports background checks, they dont see this as an issue that is going to be the deciding thing for those few undecided voters. Trump obviously much more concerned about some erosion of his base. That is a point that a lot of these gun groups and folks pushing away from the president to back away from background checks, they made that point over and over because they have observed this president for the better part of three years. They know one thing that animates him and freaks him out is the prospect of losing his core supporters. Eli, thank you. Youll come back and join me in a few minutes. If the government wont take the first step in reforming this countrys gun laws, some activists say they certainly will. The organization march for our lives today rolling out a new initiative to cut gun violence in this country and cut it dramatically. The group was founded in the wake of that february 2018 mass shooting at Stoneman High School in parkland, florida. 17 students and Staff Members were killed in that attack. The groups first effort, marches in washington and across the country and around the world, in fact, on march 24th of that year brought out more than a Million People to demond action on gun reform. With us, two cofounders of the march for our lives movement, david hogg and tia roberts, both students at douglas high school. Both survivors of that 2018 shooting. A big thanks to both of you this morning. Before we talk about the initiative, tia, your reaction to the president and what appears to be once again some wavering here on expanding background checks. Of course. Well, its not like the wavering is unexpected. All we ask is that if you dont agree with us, if you dont agree with our plan, then come up with your own bold plan. And so thats what we ask of all politicians, really. David, in a nutshell here, tell us what your group is calling for in this new peace plan, as you guys are calling it. Well, were calling for a multitude of things, none of which could be fully covered in this interview. Thats why i would encourage people to go to marchf marchforourlives. Com to take a look at the plan. The plan is a bold response to the amount of gun deaths we have every single year in the United States right now. Its not a plan looking to get democrats or republicans elected. Its looking to get americans that are morally just leaders elected, that care about people dying across the nation on a daily basis. We see all the Mass Shootings that happen on tv, but we dont see the everyday shootings that happen nearly as much. We especially dont see the majority of gun deaths, which are suicides, predominantly in rural and suburban areas. We never hear about the root causes of gun violence which are unjustice. We hope this plan can address that in the first place. What about the president s assertion that so much of it goes back to Mental Illness as well . I think its important to remember that what is not going to get us out of this issue is stigmatizing Mental Health more. We need to realize that as americans that people that are mentally ill are significantly more likely to be the victims of gun violence rather than the perpetrators. Weve seen a massive doubledigit increase in gun suicides and overall suicides over the past decade. And only talking about Mental Health, instances where youre talking about the motivations of someone committing a mass shooting, is not going to help resolve the situation or help anyone in the United States. This past weekend we saw protests in all 50 states. Some large, some smaller. Protesters calling for changing the gun laws in this country things appeared to once again be stalled on a federal level. Are you seeing progress on the local level, on the state level . Of course. Theres always progress thats being made by grassroots activists, people who are on the ground in those same protests. Thats what we really tried to highlight in the peace plan. We brought together people from all over the country. We brought together survivors, policymakers, real gamechangers in this movement that are talking about gun violence prevention. And the peace plan weve created out of those same sentiments and the same people who are on the ground marching really came through. You know, from time to time, we hear from both of you on the broadcast here and i see you on other stations as well. And i dont think we always ask you how youre doing. Youre mass shooting survivors. Youve devoted your lives to crisscross the country to affect some sort of change. On a personal level, how are you doing . How are you coping . I think what we need to think about isnt so much how are we doing but how are the people not currently on tv doing. How are the survivors that walk over bloodstained sidewalks on a daily basis that dont get the recognition of historical injustice that causes gun violence in so many communities across the United States. Thats what we hope to address in in plan. Behope to come up with communitybased solutions and creating federal funding for programs that address the root causes of gun violence. Not just creating stronger gun law says and not just talking about Mental Health but by talking about every single aspect of this issue sz what it is, a Public Health issue that wont be solved by more mass incarceration. We realize that if mass incarceration solved our issue, tyah and i wont be sitting here right now when we have the highest prisoner population in the world. I think thats a good spot to end it. Give us the website one more time. If you want to check out the peace plan you can go to marchforourlives. Com. Even if you dont agree with what we say, go out there and look. Right now we need some leadership in this country and we need politicians to go out with a plan. When they only debate these things again and again after every mass shooting, and donald trump goes out after parkland and says he wants to ban assault weapons and backtracks and then another mass shooting happens and he does the same thing, we need to show him thats not okay. We need to work with anybody thats willing to work with us to get these policies enacted. If donald trump wanted to come to us and have a meeting with us to talk about how we can address and reduce gun violence as a Public Health crisis in the United States, were more than willing to do that. You correct me if im wrong, but i feel like you were at the meeting at the white house in the wake of the shooting where the president did publicly proclaim something was going to be done. Were you not . I wasnt at the white house but many of the other survivors of the parkland shooting were there. What i hope we can understand is that we need actual federal policy and a plan. Universal background checks is not enough. We need to recognize what the framers did not intend the Second Amendment to be was an issue that ended up taking 40,000 american lives annually. We need to realize we need to properly interpret it because up until d. C. Versus heller, the Second Amendment was not interpreted the way it is currently. Well leave it there. Tyah, thank you. David, thanks as always as well. Winning over women. Thats the goal for a team of the president s loyal female supporters as they fan out across the country this week. But with a low Approval Rating among women especially and those growing economic worries, how tough a sell is that going to be . Also, nearly all of the 2020 democrats are in iowa today. They are set to address a labor convention. Well head to iowa as Elizabeth Warren is scheduled to address the crowd this hour. Owd this ho. President trump surrogates hitting the road tomorrow making a tough sell to suburban women in a multistate blitz. Its about Economic Empowerment and trying to win them over for 2020. With a possible economic slowdown looming, will it be enough to mobilize women republicans who abandoned last fall. Im joined by gabby orr who looks at the trump strategy coast to coast and Cornell Belcher and lynette lopez. What exactly is the Trump Campaign trying to do to win over these voters . Well, craig, the first point theyre trying to make is that the president has a record of empowering women during his last 2 1 2 years as president. Through Economic Empowerment, doing things like including a paid family leave plan in the white house budget, including theyve been talking a lot about lowering the Unemployment Rate for women. So, thats something they plan to take to at least 13 states thursday night. Theyll be hosting this evening of empowerment. Thats the way the Trump Campaign is billing it. This will include surrogates ranging from former governors, jan brewer in arizona will partake in this nationwide event, to campaign spokespeople like katrina pearson. The main goal is to bring women voters to the tablk about the president s record and their view to deploy them as protrump spok spokespeople in their own community. The biggest obstacle they face is the warning signs of an economic downturn. The questions theyll have to answer these women may have. I spoke to a trump volunteer yesterday in iowa. I said if women come to this event and they ask you, were seeing all these warning signs of a possible recession, what is your response . Essentially she told me, im just going to tell them its a lie, its a hoax. Beyond that theres nothing she can say to asuasuage their concerns. Those polls gabby cites, they should be troubling for the campaign. Theres the latest nbc news wall street journal poll shows a 33point gap in support for trump among College Educated women. Thats a staggering gap. Theres this Approval Rating that stands at about 34 for women in general. How hard of a sell is this going to be for the surrogates crisscrossing the country . Well, its monumental because, with all due respect, its not the economy, stupid. Particularly when it comes to women. If you look at what happened in 2018, trump did his worse where the economy was actually doing its best. And it was and democrats did well on the backs of College Educated white women moving strongly moving to democrats in a way they hadnt before. Hillary didnt win College Educated white women. Barack didnt either. Obama lost white voters by 20 points. Hillary lost white voters by 20 points. This past election democrats lost white voters by 10 percentage points. If you c