At a press conference at the United Nations last week, President Donald Trump accused Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of being too busy on an impeachment "witch-hunt" to work with him on gun control.
"Chris Murphy who've I've been dealing with on guns," President Trump said in his speech. "So nice and always, 'No, we want to work it out, we want to work it out.' But they're too busy wasting their time on the witch-hunt."
But Murphy says the White House still wants him at the negotiating table.
“Hours after I called for the President's impeachment, I got a phone call from a high-ranking official at the White House asking me to stay at the table on the issue of guns,” Murphy said.
Murphy has been in close contact with Trump officials for weeks, hoping to come up with gun control legislation that will garner bipartisan support. Murphy says the latest dustup with Trump won’t change that.
"So long as he occupies that office he's still President of the United States and to me, the issue of gun violence is about life and death," he said.
Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have accused Murphy of telling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that Senate Democrats would vote to cut off aid to his country if he agreed to investigate the son of 2020 democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, as requested by Trump. Murphy says no such discussion ever took place.
