Friday’s CBS This Morning offered extensive coverage of the deadly shooting on Thursday at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, but one of the segments took a broader, sappy look at pushing gun control through the lens of President Obama’s “evolving anger” on the inability to pass gun control measures through Congress where he’s found “little” of any “hope and change.”
With his third fawning retrospective on the President in less than a year, chief White House correspondent Major Garrett began by telling viewers that it’s simply “impossible to sum up all of President Obama's intellectual and emotion reactions to what he views as an epidemic of mass gun violence on his watch, but we can start with disbelief, compassion, frustration, and evolving anger.”
Following the movie theater shooting in July 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, Garrett observed that Obama “played the familiar presidential role of grief counselor” while he “struggled with a loss and the words to help a nation cope” after the horrifying school shooting in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut
It was immediately after that tragedy that the President began aggressively pushing for gun control and when “pro-gun rights killed the President’s push for wider federal background checks on gun sales and limits on ammunition clip,” Garrett lamented that Obama finally “flashed some anger” at the failed push (which was partially derailed by four Senate Democrats).
Turning to 2015 and the Charleston, South Carolina shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church, Garrett declared: “Mr. Obama’s patience had worn thin even as his sense of resignation had grown.” Concerning his remarks on Thursday evening, Garrett praised them as having “identified a deeper, more complex dynamic behind the political paralysis.”
Before tossing back to the show’s co-hosts, Garrett concluded by invoking Obama’s campaign phrase of “hope and change”:
The President also used another word yesterday – numb. He fears the nation has come to accept the unimaginable and somehow found a way to take the shock and sadness in stride. Charlie, for a presidency that began at least in concept around hope and change, President Obama finds little of either here.
Back in studio, co-host Charlie Rose gushed about what a “fantastic report to understand the anger and the depth of the emotion of the President of the United States...and the sense of almost powerlessness to change.”
Co-host and Obama family friend Gayle King added: “You could really, guys, feel his frustration and a lot of people woke up this morning and asked that exact same question – how much longer? Enough is enough is enough.”
Turning back to Garrett, he offered another favorable look-back at President Obama on gun control after the Charleston shooting that aired on June 18's CBS Evening News in which he emphasized that Obama “appears exhausted by gun violence and the political stalemate.”
During the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri in November 2014, Garrett appeared on the November 18 edition of the CBS Evening News with a gooey segment that told of how Ferguson “tested once more” a President who has “willingly shouldered the burden of a nation fractured along racial lines” in the face of “unrealistic expectations of healing.”
The relevant portions of the transcript from CBS This Morning on October 2 can be found below.
CBS This Morning
October 2, 2015
7:31 a.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Evolution of Outrage; How Obama’s Response to Mass Shootings Has Changed]
GAYLE KING: Major Garrett is at the White House and he looks how the President's responses have changed over the past few years. Major, good morning.
MAJOR GARRETT: Good morning. It is impossible to sum up all of President Obama's intellectual and emotion reactions to what he views as an epidemic of mass gun violence on his watch, but we can start with disbelief, compassion, frustration, and evolving anger. After the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre, President Obama played the familiar presidential role of grief counselor.
OBAMA [on 07/20/12]: We may never understand what leads somebody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this. Such evil and violence is senseless. It's beyond reason.
GARRETT: After Sandy Hook, the day the President called his worst in office, Mr. Obama struggled with a loss and the words to help a nation cope.
OBAMA [on 12/14/12]: I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.
GARRETT: It was then Mr. Obama turned toward gun control, an issue he had marginalized before Sandy Hook.
OBAMA [on 12/14/12]: We are going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
GARRETT: Then pro-gun rights senators killed the President’s push for wider federal background checks on gun sales and limits on ammunition clips. Mr. Obama stood with Sandy Hook families in the Rose Garden and, for the first time, flashed some anger.
OBAMA [04/17/13]: There were no coherent arguments why we would do this. It came down to politics.
GARRETT: After the Charleston church shooting Mr. Obama's patience had worn thin even as his sense of resignation had grown.
OBAMA [06/18/15]: I've had to make statements like this too many times. It is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now.
GARRETT: Yesterday, after more than a dozen statements on the President identified a deeper, more complex dynamic behind the political paralysis.
OBAMA [on 10/01/15]: The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. [SCREEN WIPE] What is also routine is that somebody, somewhere, will comment and say Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize.
GARRETT: The President also used another word yesterday – numb. He fears the nation has come to accept the unimaginable and somehow found a way to take the shock and sadness in stride. Charlie, for a presidency that began at least in concept around hope and change, President Obama finds little of either here.
ROSE: Thanks, Major. Fantastic report to understand the anger and the depth of the emotion of the President of the United States.
KING: Yes.
ROSE: And the sense of almost powerlessness to change.
KING: You could really, guys, feel his frustration and a lot of people woke up this morning and asked that exact same question – how much longer? Enough is enough is enough.
O’DONNELL: It's become routine. The word routine.
KING: The word routine scares me too, Norah.
