In an interview with C-SPAN that aired earlier this week, President Donald Trump described his “most difficult” days in office — and they’re lined with tragedy.
“When you have a school shooting…it angers me,” Trump said. “That’s something that you just never can really get over.”
“How can a thing like this happen?”
The Daily Caller reports that C-SPAN political editor and program host Steve Scully recently sat down with the president in the Oval Office for an interview that quickly turned emotional.
“What was your most difficult day, thus far?” Scully asked the commander-in-chief.
Trump responded that “we’ve had a lot,” but pointed to school shootings as his toughest days.
“It really angers me,” Trump said. “It frustrates everybody. You say, ‘How can a thing like this happen? How is it possible?’ When you see innocent children being killed, teachers — that’s something that you just never can really get over.”
.@SteveScully: “What was your most difficult day, thus far?”
President Trump: “Well, we’ve had a lot…When you have a school shooting…That’s something that you just never can really get over.”
Full interview at 9:55pm ET on C-SPAN https://t.co/nC1kPGJm5T pic.twitter.com/9y1vT2tKCT
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 30, 2019
“What can we do?”
Trump said he’s often wondered if there’s “something we can do,” but acknowledged that “there are so many different sides to it.”
When pressed by Scully on possible solutions, Trump referenced “many things” that are outlined in a report compiled by the White House, subject matter experts, and victims and their families following the February 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The president also expressed his desire to hold another roundtable discussion on the topic at the White House, as he had done shortly after that “horrible” incident.
As for the infamous shooter in that massacre, which left 17 dead and countless more injured, Trump mentioned the numerous “red flags” that went unreported, saying “people didn’t do what they should have done” in that regard.
Still, Trump admitted that sometimes there are no warnings ahead of time and mass shooters appear “out of the blue” to do their worst — which, in his view, is even more frustrating than missed warning signs.
“So those are events that really are — they’re very tough to take when you are the president of a country,” Trump said.