On Monday's The 11th Hour on MSNBC, host Brian Williams ended the show with a commentary in which he gushed over the anti-gun students who spoke at Saturday's March for Our Lives rally, and then lamented that conservative CNN political commentator Rick Santorum might have ruined the day for its supporters by recommending that students take CPR classes, try to combat bullying in their schools, and be more proactive in their own schools instead of demonstrating for more gun control.
After showing clips of student speakers from the rally, the MSNBC host lauded the protest because it "was delivered by" what he called "a group of angry, but composed -- sad, but not maudlin -- powerful, but not arrogant" speakers. He then lavished praise on one of the more outspoken liberal activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Emma Gonzalez. Here's Williams:
Emma Gonzalez, for one, did something on Saturday that Presidents and politicians and preachers have failed at in the past. She commanded that crowd and brought them to silence for what seemed like an eternity.
The MSNBC host -- who has not shown any concern for any of the recent incendiary comments made against gun rights supporters -- then moved to complaining that Santorum had ruined the day for some of the students:
The silence of that moment, the power of that whole day was broken for some folks by the comments of one man. Rick Santorum -- lifetime NRA member; former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania; former GOP presidential candidate, in fact. These days, he appears as a Trump defender in CNN panel discussions, and it was on CNN this weekend that he said this about the student protesters.
After playing clips of Santorum from Sunday's State of the Union on CNN, Williams dismissed supporters of gun rights as the "gun lobby" as he continued: "CPR classes -- Santorum's comments were cheered on by the gun lobby, but shunned by many others from parents to students to medical professionals."
He then read a Twitter response from a health care professional who criticized the former Pennsylvania Senator, and then played a clip of gun control activist David Hogg giving what Williams called a "chilling response."
