In the midst of a tough reelection fight and overseeing a city grappling with the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey made the rounds Thursday morning on national TV news and, while he was largely left to ramble on ABC (and spin utter falsehoods as seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CBS Mornings made an effort to simply do their jobs and made Frey sweat.
Frey thought he had it easy at first. Co-host Tony Dokoupil started by wondering “[h]ow does this keep happening in these United States of America” and “what are [families] telling you this morning,” which Frey used to assert shootings “shouldn’t be normalized” and Minneapolis is “united in action.”
Dokoupil interjected to force Frey into the novel concept of specifics (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: Mayor, sorry to interrupt, but you focused on that action. We’re heard your words. They’ve been very powerful and passionate in the aftermath here. What kind of action do you want to see happen so it doesn’t happen as regularly as it does in America?
FREY: Oh, red flag laws are important but they don’t go far enough. Assault weapons bans — right now, we have more guns in America than we have people. That’s a problem. There are other countries in the world where some sort of horrific shooting takes place and then they take the action to make the necessary change so that it doesn’t happen again whereas here in America, it seems like it is every couple of months, if not more, something like this happens that tou can have guns come into the city by the trunk load that people can get their hands on guns that have, as this case, severe mental health issues. That’s not acceptable. And, by the way, we should be doing this out of love for our children, not out of hatred for anybody else, but out of love for our kids and we should not be looking at these kids that got shot yesterday as just somebody else’s kids. Think of them as your own kids.
Co-host Nate Burleson cited calls on Wednesday for more “red flag laws and restrictions or even bans on assault rifles,” but wanted to know how that will actually happen beyond a politician “throwing” demands “in the air.”
Frey doubled down on the emotional (but not factual) arguments, borrowing a line from co-host Gayle King (who was off Thursday) that “[w]e need to recognize that we love our children more than we love our guns” as opposed to the other way around and prove to children adults care about them.
Dokoupil and fill-in co-host Kelly O’Grady had enough and real drilled down on this namby pamby talk because “people are passionate about their right to own a gun and defend themselves” and many Americans believe a way to express “love” for our children and loved ones is defending our household:
As for Frey’s appearance with the same talking points on ABC, chief business and economics correspondent and Minnesota native Rebecca Jarvis asked for “any updates” on the “people most directly impacted by this,” but he refused to answer that and instead gun control lectures.
Frey lamented in part that “[p]rayers, thoughts, they are certainly welcomed, but they are not enough” and Minneapolis “is going to be united in action because the truth is that there needs to be change.”
Jarvis stated the “picture that we now have of — of the shooter is incredibly disturbing” and brought up the fact that the state has “very strong red flag laws,” but didn’t prevent the massacre.
Frey avoided the question, instead dropping boilerplate leftist attitudes about banning guns and said that, completely disregarding the shooter’s mental instability (which he brought up on CBS), “this is about the guns”:
Jarvis closed by asking if Frey has spoken with the families of the two children who passed away. Frey said he had only been “in a room with them, but they need some time to process this, and I am available for anything that they could possibly need.”
He concluded with allusions to...gun control (click “expand”):
FREY: And look, we have to be thinking about them not a somebody else’s kids, but as our own. Think about them as our own kids. Consider how you would feel. Think about, you know, that last interaction that you had with your children this morning. You kissed them goodbye. You shoved some applesauce in their hand. It is the little annoyances that are actually kind of beautiful and every parent should have the assurance that their kid is going to be able to get home safe. And tragically, that did not happen for these parents right now. And so, we all have different titles in life. Professional and otherwise. But I’ll you the titles that matter most to me is husband, and it’s dad. And just last night, I only got about three hours of sleep but when my daughter Freda climbed into bed with me and, you know, I got hit in the face with a foot, the things that are normally frustrating, I cherish and every minute of it. I have a three-week-old right now —
JARVIS: You thank God for it. Wow.
FREY: — you know, yeah, changing a diaper at 2:00 in the morning, it’s something about last night for sure I said you know what? Thank God she’s okay and with us right now, but we have this obligation out of love for all of our children to make sure that this kind of thing never happens again. And we have an obligation again not just to feel grief in this moment, which is righteous, but we need to show action which is essential.