Trump 1, Clinton 0, Johnson 0

Honesty time: Trump won the Orlando shooting test.

Aside from the candidates' initial responses, which were basically:

DONALD TRUMP: We need a strong response.
HILLARY CLINTON: We need to ban guns.
GARY JOHNSON: We need to let authorities finish their investigation before we can decide what to do.

Then Trump comes back with this strong response against Clinton (from the Daily Mail):

Clinton, he said, would negligently implement a 'catastrophic immigration plan' that would 'bring vastly more radical Islamic immigrants into this country, threatening not only our society but our entire way of life.'

'Ignorance is not bliss,' he said in a half-hour speech at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

'It's deadly. Totally deadly.'

Trump castigated the former secretary of state for comments she made in November 2015 during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

'Let's be clear: Islam is not our adversary,' Clinton said then. 'Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.'

'That is Hillary Clinton,' Trump said, hammering her for her response to the weekend's bloodbath at a gay nightclub where more than four dozen people list their lives to a man who pledged allegiance to the ISIS terror army.

'The days of deadly ignorance will end, and they will end soon' if he is elected president, Trump pledged.

Clinton's response on Monday was equal parts gun control and a motherly embrace of America's gays and lesbians.

'She says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France,' Trump poked, referring to last year's terror attacks in Paris. 'One hundred thirty people were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood,' he said.

'Her plan is to disarm law-abiding Americans, abolish the Second Amendment and leave only terrorists ... with guns.'

'She wants to take away Americans' guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us,' Trump boomed, reading from a teleprompter. He pledged to meet with the National Rifle Association, the powerful lobby that has endorsed him, to 'discuss how to make sure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror.'

Finally, Trump nails the landing:

Trump, in fact, claimed that he would be a better and more effective advocate than Clinton for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans.

'Hillary Clinton can never pretend to be a friend of the gay community,' he said, while supporting immigration policies that bring along with them the threat of more jihadi immigrants.

'She can't have it both ways,' he said. 'She can't claim to be supportive of these communities while [increasing] the number of people who want to oppress these communities.'

On the other hand, Clinton flailed like a beached whale:

She declared that the federal government needs 'more resources for this fight' and insisted that 'weapons of war' like the semi-automatic rifle used in the Orlando killings should be purged from America's streets.

And she complained that the U.S. government has done precious little to connect gun licensing with terror watch lists and other tools Washington uses to manage threat levels.

'If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun,' she said.

The U.S. Constitution, however, guarantees citizens the right 'to keep and bear arms.'

There is a reason why the Constitution provides us the right to keep and bear arms, and it is directly related to her statement about the FBI keeping people from buying guns because they are a suspected terrorist. We need protection from government overreach, exactly the kind she suggests.

As for Gary Johnson? While I give him credit for being above the fray, I also think we had enough information for him to give a reasonably informed response, certainly something by yesterday. By waiting, he is missing the news cycle, which is 4 days:

Day 1: The day of the event. Lots of rumor, gossip, etc.
Day 2: Event details are gathered and reported.
Day 3: Opinions about the event are reported. More measured political statements are made where applicable.
Day 4: Responses to the opinions are made here, as the news cycle ends.  

Only the biggest events make it the full 4 days. There are rare events like 9/11 which can exceed the 4 day news cycle.

Basically, while Gary Johnson was being all presidential, today is the last chance for any kind of response from him. I find it hard to believe there is nothing in this ugly situation for him to highlight: The need for fewer gun controls? Islamic oppression against gays? The U.S. war on Islam? Anything? Bueller? Bueller? For now, he gets a goose egg.



In this first test of the presidential candidates, Trump wins, Clinton fails miserably, and Johnson is a no-show.