Fox News personality Andrea Tantaros said on national television that she “would check that podium for like a raw onion or some no-more-tears. I mean, it’s not really believable.”
Breitbart writer John Nolte went on a Twitter tirade claiming that the president rubbed Ben-Gay in his eyes to make them tear up.
— John Nolte (@NolteNC) January 5, 2016
On Infowars, commentators insisted that the president must have put pepper spray in his eyes, because they could not possibly have gotten red so quickly from simply crying. The blog published an article with the lede, “President employs tearful appeal to emotion in attempt to eviscerate Second Amendment.”
"I actually think he was sincere. I'll probably go down about 5 points in the polls by saying that," Trump joked. "But I think he was sincere."
Twenty-six people — 20 children and six adult staff members — were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 when 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire with a rifle, before killing himself when first responders arrived on the scene. It was the deadliest mass shooting at a school in US history.