Rubio Confronted by Parents, Survivors at CNN Town Hall; Rubio Signals Changes He Would Support to Restrict Guns
FRED GUTTENBERG, DAUGHTER KILLED IN PARKLAND SCHOOL MASSACRE: Your comments this week and those of our president have been pathetically weak. Look at me and tell me, guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in this school this week. And look at me and tell me, you accept it and you will work with us to do something about guns.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That last night indicative of the mood inside the CNN town hall and illustrative of the near impossible task facing Florida's junior senator, had to comfort parents who had to do the unimaginable, bury their own children. And view Marco Rubio's Republican Party as responsible for the legislative inaction that cost high schoolers their lives. Rubio said, he wants to break the gridlock on guns and have a real conversation on what to do. His first proffer? Two significant shifts that break from the NRA.</s>SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: I absolutely believe that in this country, if you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle, and I will support a law that takes that right away. Because I traditionally have not supported looking at magazine clip</s>BASH: That's pretty remarkable, you know, the fact that he said at some point during the town hall, I don't have courage as a Republican to come here and you have courage. And he's right, this is his job. He's an elected United States senator and it is his job to go and talk to his constituents, all of whom those people were. Having said that, he also was in a position where the whole room was against him. I mean, let's be honest, most of the room was against him. They want to see changes that go far beyond what he wants to do, what he is willing to do, what he believes he should do. That's 100 percent true. And I think -- look, I've heard the school -- these were his constituent, he should have been there no matter what. They also could have held town halls in more favorable parts of the state. So, you give him credit for actually going and</s>BASH: You're exactly right, and he actually said that in a tweet today. He said, "Banning all semiautomatic weapons may have been popular with the audience at CNN town hall, but it is a position well outside the mainstream." Unclear if that's true, but it is certainly well outside the mainstream of the conservative base that he relies on in Florida, that he certainly will rely on assuming he makes another run at the presidency again.</s>ABBY PHILIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I did think it was -- sorry, it was really interesting the shifts that he made on those two issues are ones that I think Democrats have always thought that you could find common ground on. That if you restrict magazine sizes to something smaller, you can just reduce the carnage. And Marco Rubio's shift on that is interesting because a lot of other Republicans are just not willing to go there. They're still not willing to go there. So it raises the question that Phil raised earlier this morning, is this about what people really believe or what people are willing to do based on their belief and they're willing to compromise in order to get something done. Or are they unwilling to go that far because they're worried about the political consequences of going against -- the position of the NRA is to not restrict those magazines. There are real political consequences for Republicans who are more worried about, you know, fights on the right than they are about fights on the left.</s>BASH: And that was something that Senator Rubio was confronted about from an emotional survivor of the massacre last week. Let's take a listen.</s>CAMERON KASKY, SCHOOL SHOOTING SURVIVOR: Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?</s>RUBIO: I do support the Second Amendment and i also support the right and view of everyone here to be able to go to school and be safe. And I do support any law that would keep guns out of the hands of a deranged killer. And that's why I've supported things that I stood for and fought for during my time there.</s>KASKY: Do you want more money, more NRA money?</s>RUBIO: That's the wrong -- well, look, first of all, the answer is people buy into my agenda.</s>MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Look, I mean, he's trying to make this point that the NRA supports him because of what he supports, that they're not buying influence with him. And I think it's sort of misunderstood of where the NRA's power comes from. It's really not for money. They do spend a lot of money on -- you know, from the sort of outside not actually donating to candidates, there are limits to that. But it is in the number of members -- in the number of people in the country who vote. And so people like to talk about how, you know, 60 percent of Americans support, you know, certain background checks or other restrictions on guns. But I would say there is a big, very much more motivated 35, 40 percent who actually get out and vote who disagree with that.</s>BASH: Let me just show our viewers -- you mentioned NRA spending. I want to show our viewers just a glimpse of what we're talking about in terms of spending. What those graphs represent is going back to 2012, the explosion of money that the NRA is spending in elections. Most of it, the yellow part, most of it is outside spending, meaning not directly to the candidates but spending on behalf of the candidates. And in 2016, most of that giant bar graph which adds up to more than $50 million was to President Trump. They did focus on six Senate races, one of those was Marco Rubio's, and, you know, it was more than $3 million. Having said that, money --</s>WARREN: Do we doubt that Marco Rubio doesn't believe this, that he's only taking these positions because the NRA funds him. I think that was his point.</s>BASH: His point is that he's taking the positions because NRA members vote for him.</s>WARREN: That's right. So -- I mean, whether or not that is in effect of something that he should be reconsidering, I don't know. I do think that, you know, these kids come up and they're very angry, they're very -- obviously very angry and very motivated to say something. But I think that going in front of these kids and addressing their anger and their concerns, you know, has to have an effect on the way that they at least consider maybe they're getting these donations from the NRA but taking these positions that sort of cut against the NRA, I think people like Marco Rubio are in a stronger position to do so because where else is the NRA going to go? On 95 percent of the issues, Rubio is going to be with them.</s>CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS: And you saw some of the kids, you know, thanking him for coming, even though they didn't agree with him and they were critical to his face, the people appreciated that he stood up, and he was the only Republican that did. So, he gets credit for that. To the shifts that he made, I do think he is -- especially on the weapons for juveniles, I mean, he's taking a position the president is also taking. So he's not taking that position all by himself for now.</s>BASH: That's true. He's got political cover from the president but a position with the NRA. We'll have to see if that goes anywhere. Up next, the White House says President Trump has total confidence in his national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster. So why, then, is the Defense Department exploring a potential move for him back to the Pentagon? That's up next.