to stand. “This is my friend who is going into the military,” Cameron said. “I need you to tell him that he’s going to live to make it to serve our country.”
Senator Rubio calmly buttoned his blazer while assuring them that Chris would live to serve the country and have a voice in changing its laws.
Cameron took a moment to call for bipartisanship. “Guys, look, this isn’t about red and blue. We can’t boo people because they’re Democrats and boo people because they’re Republicans.” He said anyone ready to change was somebody they need on their side. “So Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA in the future?”
The crowd erupted, and leapt to their feet, applauding. It went on and on, and Senator Rubio waited them out with his hands clasped behind his back, sidestepping back and forth, over and over. Cameron fought back a smile and overreached, lamenting twice that he really wanted to take on “the NRA lady”—how she can look in the mirror . . .
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Senator Rubio asked.
“I don’t freaking know,” Cameron said.
“That’s OK.”
“The question is about NRA money,” Tapper said.
Rubio started out coherently, saying he’d been consistent over time, and then grew rambling and confused: “Number two—no. The answer to the question is that people buy into my agenda. And I also support . . .” By the fourth concept he cited supporting—“The things that I have stood for and fought for”—the crowd was beginning to jeer, and Cameron cut off the filibuster:
“No more—no more NRA money?” He tried to brush that off, and Cameron kept repeating it. “More NRA money?”
Rubio, notoriously flusterable, started stammering (and this is how the official transcript punctuated it): “I—there—that is the wrong way to look—first of all, the answer is, people buy into my agenda.”
“You can say no.”
“Well—I—I—the influence of any group—”
He had totally lost the crowd. The jeers were louder and relentless now, and Cameron turned to the crowd to call them off. “Guys, come on, be quiet. We’re gonna be here all night.”
Rubio continued insisting that the NRA was irrelevant: “The influence of these groups comes not from money. The influence comes from the millions of people that agree with the agenda . . .”
Cameron kept pulling him back: “In the name of seventeen people, you cannot ask the NRA to keep their money out of your campaign?”
“I think in the name of seventeen people, I can pledge to you that I will support any law that will prevent a killer like this from getting a gun,” Rubio said.
“No, but I’m talking about NRA money.” Cameron then suggested maybe they could raise enough money for Rubio to replace the NRA contributions, and then circled back: “Are you gonna be accepting money from the NRA in the future?”
“I—I’ve always supported—I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda. But my agenda is—I’ll give you a perfect example . . .” He rattled on until the segment was used up. He’d spent all of it running from the question, and never advanced a coherent point.
The reviews for Rubio were withering. He was the butt of comedy sketches and late-night monologues for days.
Dana Loesch faced off against Emma González a few minutes later, and Loesch came prepared—not just to debate, but to emote. She tried to disarm Emma by praising her bravery and then recasting it entirely as a mental health failure.
After the town hall event Wednesday night, Cameron called Barclay from the airport around two a.m., about to board the red-eye, giddy about taping Ellen in L.A. “Just an excitable kid,” she said. She chided him, half-joking, “Did you bring your script? Are you going to go off-book by the time you get back? Are you drinking water, because your throat sounds like shit right now—you’ve literally lost your voice.”
“Then he’s calling me crying because he’s getting death threats,” Barclay said. “It was really taking a toll on him. From the physical exhaustion, the emotional exhaustion, the death threats—on him, on his friends that he now felt responsible for, because he had started this movement. The stress about trying, I think—it’s what every celebrity kid goes through. It’s like, ‘OK, do I leave my life? How much of my real life do I abandon? How much do I give up? How much do I try to save?’”
Way too much for a seventeen-year-old boy. And the last thing he needed