On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell and Charlie Rose ganged up on former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel from the left. O'Donnell cited sources blaming Emanuel for the President's failure to push for stricter gun control during his first term. But neither anchor brought up the obvious subject: Chicago's high murder rate, and what that says about the big Democratic city's rigid anti-gun stance.
O'Donnell hounded the Chicago mayor for resisting Attorney General Eric Holder's liberal anti-gun agenda and over the Obama administration's apparent hesitance towards the controversial issue [audio available here; video below the jump]:
O'DONNELL: You were President Obama's chief of staff, and in 2009, according to Danny Klaidman's book, 'Kill or Capture', you were furious with Attorney General Holder, who held a press conference in February of 2009, saying that the Obama administration was going to reinstitute...the assault weapons ban, and that you sent word to Justice that Holder needed to shut up on guns....Were you worried about the political backlash of taking on and pushing for the assault weapons ban? Why didn't Obama do that?
O'DONNELL: The Brady campaign, I mean, in the first year, gave Obama an 'F' - an 'F'!...And there was a report in The New York Times on Sunday that after the Aurora shooting...I know you weren't at the White House then - but that the Justice Department went to the White House with ways to expand the background check system, in order to reduce the risk of guns falling in the hands of mentally ill people, and there was a decision made not to go that far. What I guess I'm trying to ask is not assign blame, but politically, how hard is it to take on the NRA?
Rose later insisted that the President needed to admit fault for not doing enough to pass regulations on firearms:
ROSE: I don't understand why people, who did not have the political will to go forward, don't simply acknowledge it, and say, I've come around, as some have....the President did not do all that he could, and you know it, and...I suspect he knows it. But the more important thing is, is it now time to stand up to the NRA..?
CBS This Morning has pursued gun control even before the recent massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. On December 4, the program blamed the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide on a supposed "gun culture" in the NFL and in the U.S. in general. On November 30, the newscast promoted liberal comedian Stephen Colbert's stereotyping of firearm owners as he poked fun of a proposed gun dorm at the University of Colorado.
The full transcript of the Rahm Emanuel interview on Tuesday's CBS This Morning is available at MRC.org.
