White House rips Senate 'cowards' on gun votes

The White House laced into Senate Republicans as “cowards” on Tuesday morning for voting down two gun control amendments in the wake of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“What we saw last night on the floor of the United States Senate was a shameful display of cowardice,” press secretary Josh Earnest said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." “The reason that I describe it as cowardice is I don’t know what else to call it. Cowards are people who talk really tough in the hope that they will not be asked to actually act and do something. And the truth is that’s exactly what Republicans have done.”


The Senate was unable to pass any of the four gun measures Monday night, an outcome that was already widely expected before the first vote was cast. The amendments dealt largely with two separate issues, an expansion of background checks for gun purchases and an effort to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists.

After a week of what Earnest described as "tough" talk from GOP senators following the June 12 shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub that killed 49 people, the top White House official had harsh words after Monday’s votes.

“Republicans have run around and spent the last week saying ‘radical Islamic extremism’ to anybody who will listen,” he continued. “But when it actually comes to preventing those extremists from being able to walk into a gun store and buy a gun, they’re AWOL. They won’t do anything about it because they’re scared of the NRA. That’s shameful.”

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect how many amendments Republicans voted down.