In less than a week since they survived a mass murdering gunman attack on their school, two students who quickly became media stars of the Parkland, Florida school shootings are now media obsessed to the point they say they are snubbing an invitation to meet with President Donald Trump this Wednesday in favor of appearing on a televised town hall with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Additionally the students, Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, would not commit to attending their school’s reopening because they might get called to do more interviews with the press. The students made the statements on CNN’s New Day show Monday morning in a joint live interview with Alisyn Camerota.
Two survivors of the Florida school shooting slam politicians' responses to the massacre, calling them "disgusting" and "pathetic" https://t.co/XqjuNCCBvF pic.twitter.com/qNszGv95L6
— CNN (@CNN) February 19, 2018
During the interview Hogg mentioned that he is short on sleep since the shooting, implying that is because he is doing interviews around the clock. The CNN interview took place at 6:53 a.m. EST.
Hogg told CNN his father is a retired FBI agent as he attacked Trump for his weekend tweet chastising the FBI for missing chances to stop the school shooter while focusing on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
The students also attacked the NRA as “child murderers” and called politicians who accept donations from the NRA as ‘funding killers’ and not ‘standing with children’.
Partial CNN transcript of the interview that cuts off right before Gonzalez, with Hogg nodding in agreement, says they might be too busy doing interviews to attend their school’s reopening. The transcript was completed by TGP.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this, we call B.S.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Survivors in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre are mobilizing with a message for their elected officials, enough is enough. The students there are demanding that lawmakers take action on gun control so students can be safe at school.
Two of those students who you will recognize join us now. We have Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg.
Guys, it is so great to have you both back on the show.
Emma, that clip that we just played, that has been viewed, as of this morning, about 20 million times. CNN posted it on our FaceBook page. Twenty million times around the world people have clicked on that because they were so interested in what you had to say.
So — so to the politicians that you were talking about, to Senator Marco Rubio, who said after this shooting, you know, you can pass the law, but you’re still going to have these horrible attacks, what do you say to him?
EMMA GONZALEZ, FLORIDA SHOOTING SURVIVOR: I say to that, that even though — they say that criminals get guns no matter what laws you have to place. That might be true. But we don’t have to encourage them to get those guns. We can make it harder, absolutely make it harder, and we can prevent some seriously nasty crimes and some seriously indescribable tragedies from occurring.
[06:55:21] And if somebody doesn’t want to do that at this point, that’s — that’s pathetic. CAMEROTA: David —
DAVID HOGG, FLORIDA SHOOTING SURVIVOR: Yes, I would —
CAMEROTA: Go ahead.
HOGG: I would say to Marco that you can’t work through divisions. It’s absolutely terrifying the fact that he immediately got up and started talking about how gun control is not the solution. Every answer is the solution at this point because we haven’t tried any of them. And we need a multi-faceted approach to this extremely complex problem because if we don’t have that, there — this will never come to an end.
CAMEROTA: Yes, what did you both think about the president tweeting over the weekend, very sad that the FBI missed all of the signs — signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They’re spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. There is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud.
HOGG: I think it’s disgusting, personally. My father’s a retired FBI agent and the FBI are some of the hardest working individuals I have ever seen in my life. They work every day, 24/7, to insure the lives of every single American in this country. And it’s wrong that the president is blaming them for this. After all, he is in charge of the FBI. He can’t put that off on them. He is in charge of them.
And these people, what they love to do is push it — this off on the bureaucracy and say it’s not him. He is in charge of the FBI. That’s one of the executive branches. The executive branch is supposed to enforce laws. And as such, President Trump is in charge of that and the FBI.
GONZALEZ: And I do want to reiterate, the FBI were some of the amazing first responders who were helping us get to safety. And the fact that he wants to discredit them in any way and that he’s trying to shift our focus onto them is —
HOGG: Disgusting.
GONZALEZ: It’s not — is not acceptable.
CAMEROTA: I appreciate that reminder, that they are the first responders and that they go into these dangerous situations to try to save people.
So the president said that he’s going to hold a listening session with students on Wednesday. Have either of you been invited?
GONZALEZ: I believe we’ve been invited but neither of us are going. We had a preset town hall meeting that we will be attending.
HOGG: It’s on CNN with Jake Tapper. We will not be attending the listening session.
CAMEROTA: So you have to — so you had — you had a — you’ve already committed to that. So you’ll be doing that.
Tell —
HOGG: Oh, from the beginning, yes.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
CAMEROTA: Guys, tell me what’s going to happen on March 24th with your plan for a big march on Washington. What’s your vision?
GONZALEZ: My vision is (INAUDIBLE) from space. You know, like where — this is going to be enormous. And I really hope that we can like — I know that the word has spread wide and far, but I hope that we can even spread it even farther by that point, because I know that that’s going to be indescribable but in such a positive way.
HOGG: And we have to. We just can’t stop. Because these special interest groups are never going to. And if we don’t stop and we make our voices heard as an American public together, if we make our voices heard as an American public together, we’re going to have to do that if we ever want to overcome this terrible tragedy.
CAMEROTA: So what do you say to the NRA?
GONZALEZ: Disband, dismantle.
HOGG: And don’t make another organization under a different name.
GONZALEZ: And, yes, don’t make another organization under a different name. Don’t you dare come back here. The fact that you were in power for so long and that you had so much influence for so long in America just goes to show how much time and effort we still need to spend on fixing our country.
HOGG: Absolutely.
GONZALEZ: And gun control is just the first thing right now. The first thing that we are mainly focusing on.
CAMEROTA: Look, I don’t have to tell you guys, they — that they give millions of dollars to politicians.
HOGG: We know.
CAMEROTA: They have a very powerful tool.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
CAMEROTA: So, I mean, how do you expect politicians, who need money to keep running for office to say no to the NRA?
GONZALEZ: Because we keep telling them that if they accept this blood money, they are against the children. They are against the people who are dying. And that is — that — there’s no other way to put it at this point. You’re either funding the killers or you’re standing with the children. The children who have no money. We don’t have jobs, so we can’t pay for your campaign. We would hope that you have the decent morality to support us at this point.
HOGG: And not take money from people that want to keep lessening gun legislation and making it even easier for these horrifying people to get guns, because if you can’t get elected without taking money from child murders, why are you run?
CAMEROTA: Hey, guys, are you going to be able to go back to school this week or next week? Are you going to go back into the building where this happened?
[06:59:57] GONZALEZ: Well, first of all, the freshman building is being torn down. But the rest of the school — the rest of the school is staying up. And as soon as we can, we are going to go back into the school. As soon as they say school is on Monday, I’m going to be there.
ADDITIONAL TRANSCRIPTION BY TGP:
GONZALEZ: I’m pretty sure. Unless I have interviews, or, unless we have interviews or somewhere to be, we are going to be at school with the people who need us. We need to stand with our peers. We haven’t had time to stand with our peers through all of this; we’ve been working so hard.
CAMEROTA: Hey, David, obviously everybody remembers when we first interviewed you on Thursday morning and you were so plain spoken and so vocal and so strong. How are you guys doing emotionally? I know you’re galvanized by this but emotionally how are you?
HOGG: For me it’s been absolutely exhausting. On those first three night I only got two hours of sleep. And then I got four hours. And last night I got five but that’s only because I, I convinced a interview that I had at one in the morning in England. And, uh, it’s just been absolutely exhausting but it’s still nothing compared to what these parents are having to go through right now and I think the, that’s what people really need to focus on is these seventeen individuals. If Emma and I couldn’t exist, if we could just be nobodies still, uh that’s how I prefer it I would want everybody to be doing this on their own without any of us saying this but sadly we have to stand up and take charge because nobody else will. Cuz our elected officials certainly won’t.
CAMEROTA: David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, uh, we appreciate you keeping your foot on the gas. And we appreciate you being available to us. Marco Rubio, Senator Marco Rubio, has declined our requests to come on. Uh, best of luck, guys. (HOGG: Of course.) CAMEROTA: We’ll check back with you.
