As desperation sets in

President Trump met in the White House on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said.

  NYT

Sort of turning the tables on Trump from his call to Zelensky. Can we talk about quid pro quo?

In a statement Friday evening, an N.R.A. spokesman confirmed the meeting took place but insisted The Times’s account of the meeting was “inaccurate.”

“The N.R.A. categorically denies any discussion occurred about special arrangements pertaining to the N.R.A.’s support of the President and vice versa,” the statement said.

Of course not.

Even before the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry, Mr. LaPierre’s influence on Mr. Trump has been clear. After a 30-minute phone call last month, Mr. Trump appeared to be espousing N.R.A. talking points when answering questions about guns.

[...]

Privately, Mr. Trump has raised questions with his aides about the N.R.A.’s ability to help back his 2020 campaign the way it did in 2016, when it poured over $30 million into his election, more than any other outside group. He has voiced concerns that the group looks like it is going bankrupt and may lack the political clout it had last election cycle.

This year, the N.R.A. has been mired in investigations by attorneys general in New York and Washington, D.C. and beset by leaks about its lavish spending practices, while also facing restive donors and inquiries over its ties to Russia. And its finances have been strained.

Recent public filings have shown that it largely exhausted a $25 million line of credit that was guaranteed by the deed to its Fairfax, Va., headquarters, and borrowed against insurance policies taken out on its executives. Oliver North, who departed this year as the N.R.A.’s president in an acrimonious leadership fight, has said that the organization’s legal bills, running between $1.5 million and $2 million a month from its main law firm, have created an “existential crisis.

[...]

But the organization still has considerable resources and more than five million members, many of whom overlap with Mr. Trump’s base. And rallying grass-roots support has traditionally been one of its strengths.

Aides have reassured Mr. Trump that the group is still in good enough financial shape to help him, even as his own political fortunes have shifted since the mass shootings.

[...]

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a senior White House adviser, was still calling around to senators this week, saying her father wanted to make a move on guns even as he faced impeachment. But Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. LaPierre on Friday indicated that his priority may be his own political survival rather than making any strides on guns.

May be.



Circling the drain, more like.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.