People always say that if someone sees something that is wrong, they should speak up, and that's what happened in the case of a school shooting in Florida last week, but "nobody did anything," and President Donald Trump wants to keep that from happening again, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said Tuesday.
The president is advocating "a conversation right now about how we can get things accomplished to prevent these types of horrific acts," Gidley told Fox News' "Happening Now."
"In this particular instance and those in the past, people saw something, people said something, but nobody did anything," said Gidley. "We have to have a better system of communicating red flags across law enforcement and across the background check system so these types of people with mental illnesses, with evil in their hearts cannot get weapons."
Accused Parkland, Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz had been seen by several mental health professionals, but was able to purchase seven rifles, and Gidley said that was because there is "no question there was a systemic failure at the FBI."
"They were alerted about this individual," Gidley said. "People knew of this individual. Something like 30 visits from local law enforcement to this shooter's home. Nobody did anything. That's the issue here. Time for talk is over. We have to get things in place to protect the American people and this president wants to do just that."
Trump was criticized over his tweet attack on the FBI, when he said the agency was too busy investigating Russian collusion, but Gidley said Tuesday it's "obvious the FBI messed up."
"Director [Christopher] Wray took responsibility for that," said Gidley. "It's unacceptable when you look at all the information they had on this particular shooter. This is a horrific act of violence and grotesque and this person is pure evil. The FBI at some levels knew it but for whatever reason it didn't make it up the chain of command for somebody to do something."
Gidley also discussed the ongoing Russian investigation, calling last week's indictments of 13 Russian nationalists, an "unprecedented move" to expose what had been done in the election.
"It is a complete violation of what we try to accomplish here in free and fair elections," said Gidley. "Russia tried to play a massive role in that."
The actions, though, started in 2014, said Gidley, and "clearly" former President Barack Obama's administration knew about it.
"This president armed Ukraine with offensive weapons to go against what Russia wanted," Gidley said of Trump. "We opened up drilling to try to bring down oil prices against what Russia wanted and we attacked Syria against what Russia wanted. This president has been clear about his stance on Russia."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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