In the footage, a Fox News anchor mumbles to a camera man that films him. Behind him stands a podium strapped with microphones where the police just finished briefing the press on the Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
They’re about to do a recap of the press conference when my wife steps up to the empty podium.
“Aren’t you guys tired of reporting this?” She asks the reporters and cameramen who were milling about, breaking down their equipment.
“Aren’t you tired of being here and covering all these mass shootings?”
She goes on to ask the big question, the massive elephant stomping around our national room.
“How are our children still dying (in school shootings) and why are we failing them?”
She called me shortly after.
“So, I took over a press conference,” she said. Then she sent me a link to the video.
I watched the clip. Immediately thought — this is going to go everywhere.
“How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?”
This wasn’t the first time. Ever since my wife and son were caught in a mass shooting in the Highland Park fourth of July parade last summer, she’s been a die-hard advocate for smarter gun laws in this country. At one point when she was visiting the Senate, Lyndsey Graham gave a ridiculous press conference about instituting a 16-week abortion ban. She asked him a question about her own situation (We had a son die 8 days after birth, — but that’s another story). Her questions clearly flustered him, before he devolved into irrelevant “conservative 101” talking points.
Call it her “semi-viral” moment. She got some attention for that.
The mic drop in Nashville was different. She exploded right away. Her story was picked up by Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Glamour, ABC News, and The New York Post. She got offers from Piers Morgan to be on his show. Katie Kouric interviewed her.
I got text messages from a producer from ABC News who was trying to reach my wife. A woman from a french magazine wrote her an email and wanted an…
