Campaign Action
We've been here before, again and again and again before. But Trump apparently wants to relive the early 1990s (maybe because he had more hair and less bulk then?), so is convening a meeting on how bad video games are for our youth. This, by the way, is supposed to be in response to the Parkland massacre.
Trump has signaled in the wake of the shooting that killed 17 people that he believes violence in video games is partly to blame for real life violence. On Thursday, the President will host a meeting between representatives from the video game industry and those who think games have made kids more violent in recent years.
The meeting marks a distinct pivot away from the gun control measures discussed by Trump and others in the immediate wake of the shooting. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said last month that the plan would be released by the end of last week, but sources have told CNN that no plan will be released at least until after Thursday's meeting.
"As we continue to work towards creating school safety programs that protect all children, the President will be meeting with video game industry leaders and members of Congress to discuss violent video game exposure and the correlation to aggression and desensitization in children," White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said Wednesday. "This meeting will be the first of many with industry leaders to discuss this important issue."
Been there, done that and thousands upon thousands of people have been killed in the meantime. By guns. But Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of the company that makes the game "Grand Theft Auto," and Robert Altman, chairman and CEO of the parent company that produces games like "Fallout," will be there to get beat up on and potentially have the opporunity to point out what Dan Hewitt, spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association, says: "Entertainment is distributed and consumed globally, but the US has an exponentially higher level of gun violence than any other nation." It's the guns.
Among other attendees? Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center. That's the guy who infamously said President Obama"looked like a skinny ghetto crackhead." Bozell has a very long history of being a horrible racist. And he also has no problem with violence. He cheered on Greg Gianforte, then Republican candidate for Montana's congressional seat, when he assaulted a reporter last year, saying the reporter, Ben Jacobs, "is an obnoxious, dishonest first class jerk. I'm not surprised he got smacked." He's a fine person to opine on our cultural challenges.