Donald Trump argued that even if there were “great mental health programs,” people will still “slip through the cracks” and commit acts of violence like the school shooting in Oregon during an interview on Friday’s “Morning Joe.”
Trump, who linked the Oregon school shooting to mental health problems, said, “you know it’s awfully hard to put somebody in an institution for the rest of their lives based on the fact that he looks like he could be a problem. So it’s a terrible situation, it’s huge mental illness. You’re going to have these things happen and it’s a horrible thing to behold. Horrible.”
Willie Geist: If you were president of the United States you would have received a phone call sometime yesterday afternoon that a guy walked into a community college in Oregon, shot the place up, 10 dead, at least, at this point this morning. What would you have done to stop that? There are universal background checks in the state of Oregon. We don’t know how this guy got his gun or his mental state of well being. What would you have done?
Donald Trump: Well, first of all, you have strong laws on the books. But you’re always going to have problems. I mean we have millions and millions of people and millions of sick people all over the world. It can happen all over the world. And it does happen all over the world, by the way, but this is sort of unique to this country, the school shootings. And you’re going to have difficulty no matter what. I mean, if you could, if you could see that probably we’ll find out with him like we did with numerous of the others that, “Gee wiz that they were loaners and they were probably sick.” You know, often times this happens and the neighborhood says “You know, we sort of saw that about him.” and “It really looked like he could be a problem.” But, you know it’s awfully hard to put somebody in an institution for the rest of their lives based on the fact that he looks like he could be a problem. So it’s a terrible situation, it’s huge mental illness. You’re going to have these things happen and it’s a horrible thing to behold. Horrible.
Geist: So Donald, is it fair to say then your opinion is some people are going to slip through the cracks and there’s not much you can do about it?
Trump: Well, you know it’s not politically correct to say that but you’re going to have difficulty and that will be for the next million years. You’re going to have difficulty. People are going to slip through the cracks and even if you did great mental health programs, people are going to slip through the cracks. I’m sure that the people, it’s going to be found these people seem to go loaners. They have all sorts of difficulties. They call people and nobody wants to go out with them. It’s the same old story. But what are you going to do. There’s many people like that. But what are you going to do? Institutionalize everybody? So you’re going to have difficulties. You’re going to have difficulties with many different things, not just this. And that’s the way the world works and by the way, that’s the way the world always has worked, Willie.