“I don't support it anymore. I do not support the ban on assault weapons.”
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This is an oppositional (negative) promise: Trump pledged NOT to support an assault weapons ban, reversing the pro-ban position he had taken in his 2000 book. Across his 2017-2021 presidency he kept it essentially in full: no assault weapons ban was enacted or advanced by his administration, he remained NRA-endorsed, and after the August 2019 El Paso and Dayton shootings he publicly declined to pursue one, saying there was 'no political appetite' for a ban on assault rifles (verified across FactCheck.org, AP/Anchorage Daily News, NPR/KPBS, and Morning Consult). The one gun-restricting act of his term, the December 2018 bump-stock rule, targeted a rate-of-fire accessory and does not contradict this specific promise. Adversarial caveat and reason confidence is not 0.9+: at a televised bipartisan meeting on Feb 28, 2018 Trump briefly and verbally suggested adding Sen. Feinstein's assault weapons ban to a bill ('add it'), a genuine on-camera deviation from the promise. However, it was an off-the-cuff remark, softened/walked back within days after he met with the NRA (Washington Post, CNN), and never translated into any legislative push or support. Under the same standard applied to any party, a single fleeting verbal wobble that was reversed and produced no action, against an otherwise consistent four-year record of opposition, still reads as the promise essentially kept.
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