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CNN’s Acosta on Texas Tragedy: Is this ‘the New Normal the President Is Comfortable With?’

‘Is he content as others who support the Second Amendment with very little restrictions, are they content with the status quo?’
By Grabien Staff
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CABRERA: "I want to go back to Jim Acosta who is traveling with the president on his overseas trip. He called it an act of evil and asked for prayers, Jim?"

ACOSTA: "That's right. He called it an act of evil, called for prayers. Said he could not imagine the suffering that is happening right now in that small Texas town where mass shooting took place and the president now making some other remarks that essentially getting back on the script of dealing with trade and North Korea and these other regional issues that he'll be dealing with over the course of this trip to Asia. 

"Ana, I think this is just demonstrates what the president is up against when it comes to this issue of these mass shootings. Keep in mind the president was dealing with this just a month ago. I was with him in Las Vegas when he was visiting the victims, the wounded who had survived that mass shooting in Las Vegas in a hospital in that city and the president at that time was telling reporters, you know, I'm just here to comfort the wounded, to meet with the people who are suffering in all of this. We'll talk about this issue of gun safety later on. That discussion just never took place, Ana. It did not happen and so here we go again, another one of the most deadly shootings in U.S. History has occurred only a month or so later after that mass shooting and violence that unfolded in Las Vegas. 

"My guess is, Ana, is that when the president holds a news conference later on this afternoon with the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe that he's very likely to be asked this question just when is a good time, just when is the right time for the president to take on this issue or is he content as others who support the Second Amendment with very little restrictions, are they content with the status quo? Is this just the way it's going to be and we'll have to deal as a country with these mass shootings exploding every month or so and having to deal with the consequences? Is that -- is that the status quo? Is that the new normal that the president is comfortable with? 

"My guess is at some point if not today in the very near future, he is going to be asked this question. After he spends the rest of the day here in Japan, he's expected to spend the night and get on a plane and head to South Korea, where as you know he has some big issues to deal with over there, namely the nuclear crisis with North Korea and just how he plans on dealing with that. That crisis, that problem becoming so massive for him and his administration as he told reporters yesterday, he now wants to meet with the Russian president Vladimir Putin during this 13 day trip across Asia. It's likely to happen in Vietnam later on this week just to deal with this issue of North Korea and try to get a handle on how to deal with the dictator there, Kim Jong-un. 

"Make no mistake, having been on these foreign trips a number of times, this is one of those episodes that you just can't predict, that a White House, that a president cannot prepare for. They simply happen. And it is going to be striking I think to see howl the president deals with all of this as we were just saying a few moment ago, these mass shootings seem to be happening on a regular basis, too frequent for too many Americans to stomach at this point."

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