President Donald Trump wants safety and security for the nation's school children, but he does support the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said Monday.
"Legislation can't just feel good," Gidley told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Legislation has to do good . . . the time for talk is over. We have to protect our children. Donald Trump is more than the president of the United States. He is a father and a grandfather, and he wants what everybody else in this country wants: safety and security for our children at school."
Trump is in an open dialogue with the NRA, he continued, as he does support the organization.
"[The Democrats'] solution seems to be to grab the guns," Gidley said. "The problem with that is you look at the government and say let the government handle it. Well, at every level it was a failure at every level of the government to protect our children, and the Democrats are saying let the government handle it. They can't do it on their own."
During a meeting with state and local officials, Trump spoke of raising the requirement for long gun purchases to 21, a stance the NRA does not back.
"The president is a master negotiator," Gidley said. "He is listening to all the stakeholders and will make his recommendations known very soon. But at this point we've said many times the president of the United States doesn't necessarily agree with everything going on at the NRA and the NRA doesn't necessarily agree by every position by the president."
They do agree the Second Amendment is "iron clad," Gidley said, and schools need protections.
"The NRA has several programs to help local school districts do this," he added. "The president loves that idea. But there are a lot more things we can and should do to keep our children safe. The president is simply saying I want to negotiate with the NRA. I want to put something in place that protects the children of this country because the American people deserve nothing less."
Gidley also commented on the release of the Democratic memo on FBI surveillance.
"What we know now is what we've been saying for a long time, which is this was a political witch hunt, one of the biggest in history," Gidley said. "What the Democrat memo exposes is exactly what the Republican memo exposed. It didn't refute it in any way which is a Democrat Party, a national committee, can work with a Democrat campaign and Hillary Clinton and they can use money to buy a dossier put together with the help of Russians and political actors to try and discredit a political opponent."
Then, they could us the same dossier to spy on American citizens, he added.
"I believe every American citizen should be quite concerned at the fact that they didn't even have to release where they got this memo from," Gidley said. "They used it and spied on American citizens and it is terrifying."
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