An opinion article published in former President Donald Trump’s hometown newspaper has labeled the ex-president a “typical politician” over his record on gun rights.
Writer Thomas L. Knapp, director of the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, claimed that Trump was a “progressive Democrat” in a Palm Beach Post article concerning the Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn the Trump administration’s ban on “bump stocks.”
Trump, who has officially resided at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach since 2019, has not publicly weighed in on the Supreme Court’s decision. He called for the ban in 2018 following recent devastating mass shootings at a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, and a high school in Parkland, Florida. The ban on bump stocks—accessories allowing rapid-fire blasts for semiautomatic rifles, nearly converting them to machine guns—was enacted in 2019.
Trump 2024 campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt, however, said in a statement that the court’s ruling “should be respected” shortly after it was made, while describing the former president as “a fierce defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights” and touting his endorsement from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Anna Moneymaker
Knapp begged to differ in his article, which was published on Tuesday, claiming that Trump “came out against not just the Second Amendment but the Fifth Amendment as well” by supporting bump stock bans and “red flag” laws while he was serving as president.
“His 2018 actions speak louder than his 2024 words—and highlight the larger problem the Republican Party ran into when it gave its 2016 presidential nomination to a lifelong progressive Democrat for president in an (unsuccessful) attempt to out-authoritarian the Democratic Party on immigration,” Knapp wrote.
“For all his self-promoting ‘outsider’ guff, Trump’s a typical politician: On the campaign trail, he pretends to be whoever and whatever he thinks his supporters want him to be; once in office, he tends to revert to his true form,” he added. “Never trust a politician (any politician) to protect your rights (any of your rights).”
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Tuesday afternoon.
Knapp’s article was not the only recent example of a Libertarian expressing forceful opposition to Trump.
The ex-president’s appearance at the Libertarian National Convention last month was widely considered a political disaster, with the crowd booing and heckling Trump before later overwhelmingly rejecting him as the party’s nominee.
While The Palm Beach Post published Knapp’s article on Tuesday without endorsing his views, the paper itself also came out against the former president in the wake of his felony conviction in New York, with the editorial staff writing earlier this month that the country should not “have a felon as its leader.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
