David Hogg Demands Pence Cancel NRA Speech

Parkland student activist David Hogg has a new demand: politicians can’t speak to the NRA.

Previously he’d criticized politicians for taking money from the NRA (side note: when has a politician ever rejected money?), but now he’s trying to leverage his social media influence to go a step further.

Vice President Mike Pence has a speech planned at an upcoming NRA convention on May 4th, and Hogg wants him to be a no-show.

According to the Washington Examiner:

In a tweet Sunday, Hogg encouraged others to “Demand Mike Pence cancel his speech to the NRA convention on May 4.” Accompanying his post was information about a petition by MoveOn.org asking for signatures that also demanded Pence cancel his NRA speech.

The petition states the vice president’s presence at the convention was “a signal to young people organizing historic actions that the NRA’s extremist agenda and donations are more valuable to Mike Pence than the lives lost.”

The petition also targets other lawmakers, insisting those who oppose the NRA “must hold all politicians to basic standards of decency.”

Just to point out the obvious, Hogg is (attempting to) flex his power here simply for the sake of exercising power. Mike Pence would still be “evil” in the eyes of Hogg even if he obliged with his demands.

Florida’s Governor Rick Scott actually did decide to cancel his appearance at the NRA’s convention, and did Hogg praise him? Of course not! Instead, he re-tweeted a comment from the chair of the Democratic Party’s Lawyers Council, Andrew Weinstein, that blasted Scott for not passing the Left’s purity test on guns.

Hogg’s campaign to have Pence back out of his NRA speech is likely to be as successful as his campaign to boycott retirement giants Blackrock and Vanguard because the financial companies are “two of the biggest investors in gun manufacturers.”

Hogg’s claim is really just a misunderstanding of the rising popularity of index investing, whereas investors simply invest in funds that track the entire market in a country (such as the S&P 500), of which gun companies are a component.

According to BlackRock and Vanguard, not a single major investor or high-profile client has pulled funds from the two companies, which collectively manage over $5 trillion dollars in assets. It certainly was a long shot to try to target the financial fortunes of such behemoths, especially given the (likely) zero dollars his followers have invested with BlackRock or Vanguard.

I’d put the odds at Pence attending the NRA’s upcoming convention despite Hogg’s protest at roughly 100 percent.

Do you think Pence will cave to David Hogg’s demands? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!