Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Axios that it's "impossible" that President Donald Trump would pivot to gun control now, warning that such a move would "be the end of everything."
Despite taking a gun control stance in the past, Trump knows he got elected on an unambiguous pro-gun stance, and he enjoyed staunch support from the all-powerful NRA.
Not even the worst mass killing in U.S. history would be enough to move the president off of that, Trump confidants told Axios.
"Impossible: will be the end of everything," the deposed Bannon told Axios.
"Base would go insane and (Trump) knows it," Trump disciple Roger Stone told Axios.
"How insane? Worse than any immigration deal Trump might consummate with Democratic leadership," Bannon told Axios.
A bevy of Democrats on Monday began their predictable pleas for Congress and Trump to take on gun control just as first light came up on the carnage at the country music festival in Las Vegas that left 59 dead and more than 500 wounded.
But Trump will have most — if not all — Republicans, his base and his favorite outside group, the NRA, squarely in his corner, Axios reports.
"POTUS (correctly) believes he doesn't owe anything to most traditional Republican outside groups, because they didn't lift a finger to help him in the election," a Trump administration source told Axios. "NRA is very much the exception. They stayed loyal through it all and kept spending."