“What the hell is going on in the US Senate?” Tucker Carlson posted Saturday on X. “Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup against his agenda by calling early leadership elections in the senate.”
The candidates are John Thune, John Cornyn, and Rick Scott, and the selection will be by secret ballot.
“John Cornyn is an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney’s” Carlson notes. True enough, and Corny has betrayed gun owners before on numerous occasions, from backing due process denying “red flag laws” and Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, to teaming up with the late Sheila (Heavy as 10 Boxes) Jackson Lee in “#StandingForPublicSafety.”
What the hell is going on in the US Senate? Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup against his agenda by calling early leadership elections in the senate. Two of the three candidates hate Trump and what he ran on.…
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 9, 2024
Carlson is silent on Thune, who joined Cornyn and other Vichycons in supporting Harry Reid by breaking the Ted Cruz/Mike Lee Filibuster of the Anti-gun ObamaCare Law, and in voting to confirm anti-gun Merrick Garland as Attorney General.
“Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump,” Carlson declares. “Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott.”
Not so fast.
“I’m a gun owner and NRA member,” Scott wrote in a 2019 editorial for The Washington Post. “I support red-flag laws to help stop mass shootings.” As Florida Governor, Scott signed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, containing multiple infringements to “raise the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, require a three-day waiting period for most gun purchases, and ban the sale or possession of ‘bump stocks.”
Considering the Trump bump stock ban along with his past statements such as “Take the guns first, go through due process second” and a call to raise the minimum age for all gun purchases to 21, and Carlson has a point, at least as far as the “old” Trump is concerned.
All three candidates, Cornyn, Thune, and Scott, should be unacceptable to gun owners whose skeptical acceptance of campaign promises about “our beautiful Second Amendment” and opposition to the Kamala Harris/Democrat citizen disarmament agenda helped Trump achieve his definitive electoral and popular victory.
And that leads to the question: What’s the rush? Why does this need to be voted on now, and why in secret?
On learning that the three had thrown their hats in the ring for Senate Majority Leader, my first question was “How are candidates chosen?” With no clear explanation defined, the process appears to be, as one colleagues opined, someone who wants the job throws a stick in the water and sees where it floats.
But how the winner is chosen is spelled out on the Senate webpage:
“With each new Congress, the Democratic and Republican Conferences elect one of their members to serve as party leader.”
The new Senate hasn’t been seated yet, and Republicans have gained four seats. Why should the current Senate take that away from them, especially before the public has had a chance to even consider the process, let alone assess the choices and suggest candidates whose records may be more beneficial, or at least less problematic?
Can we at least have some time for public input on something that can profoundly affect us all before sneaking this through?
Why have many gun owners worked their hearts out to enact the MAGA agenda only to have Republican establishment figures from The Swamp take over from here? All we need do is look at the last time the GOP was given the keys to the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and then to recall how nothing happened to deregulate suppressors, and how establishment House Speaker Paul Ryan killed concealed carry reciprocity because the “timing wasn’t right”!
The GOP under Donald Trump — thanks to the MAGA movement that many tried to kill because of their own special interests — has nothing less than a mandate to enact an agenda that can undo decades of unconstitutional citizen disarmament edicts. Gun owners who voted for it deserve bold and true forward-thinking leadership, not the same entrenched self-serving turf protectors who kill real change and side with Democrats on “gun control.”
The leadership in the gun rights community, so-called Gun Owners for Trump who supposedly have the president’s ear, should let him know that Republicans once more snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is not what their memberships signed up for. Gun owners who agree can make that known to them, to Senate Republicans, and to the president elect. Either that or we can let one of Mitch McConnell’s parting official acts to be maneuvering the RINOs to screw us over once again.
Also see: NRSC Hiding Swamp Loyalties in Fundraising Appeals to Trump Supporters
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
