Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate. (Dem oppo folks are doing well.)
Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made clear in comments Thursday they have very different ideas in how to respond to gun violence in the wake of the Apalachee High School shooting that killed four people and injured nine others.
Driving the news: A CNN reporter asked Vance at a Phoenix, Arizona, event what his policies were on ending school shootings after this week's massacre, which saw a 14-year-old student charged with four counts of felony murder and his father facing charges including second-degree murder.Former President Trump's running mate said it was an "awful tragedy" and called for the bolstering of security in schools.
"If these psychos are going to go after our kids, we've got to be prepared for it," Vance said. "We don't have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We've got to deal with it," he added.
"I don't like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We've got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they're not able."
Meanwhile, Trump responded to a question from Fox News host Sean Hannity about the Georgia shooting during a Fox News town hall on Wednesday by saying: "It's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better, and we're going to heal our world."
What they're saying "School shootings are not just a fact of life," Harris wrote on social media Thursday evening. "It doesn't have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children — and we will."
