WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday seemed to incite American gun lovers to violence against Hillary Clinton — including what some saw as an assassination threat — by stoking fears that a Democratic White House would curtail gun ownership. The Trump campaign immediately rejected the idea that he was calling for bloodshed and accused the media and commentators of misinterpreting remarks he made at a rally in North Carolina. “Media desperate to distract from Clinton’s anti-2A stance. I said pro-2A citizens must organize and get out vote to save our Constitution!” Trump himself tweeted as firestorm erupted over his comments, widely seen as so inflammatory that a former CIA director said, “If someone else had said that… he’d be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.”
The 2A was a reference to the US Constitution’s Second Amendment which American gun lovers interpret as an unqualified right to bear arms, but which gun control advocates say is conditional. Here is what Trump said at the rally: “Hillary wants to... essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges (for the US Supreme Court), nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people… maybe there is… I don’t know.” The “Second Amendment people” are gun lovers, and Trump’s suggestion that they can “do something” to stop her (he did not say organize) was seen by critics, including some Republicans, as another reckless, double-edged word play that threw red meat at the rabble.
In some of his rallies, Trump has hinted at violence if things don’t go his way, including at his own party one time when he suggested there would be bloodshed and “bad things would happen” if they subverted his winning of the Republican nomination. Some of the most respected public intellectuals in America are now calling out Trump’s street theatre worthy of a crude Third World bully. “No citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said today,” the former CBS anchor Dan Rather said in a social media post.
“By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics... This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival.” Trump hurried to TV and radio shows to contest such attribution. “This is a strong political movement, the Second Amendment,” he told Fox News. “And there can be no other interpretation. Even reporters have told me. I mean, give me a break.” But he has been given plenty of breaks. The broad reading now in the commentariat, particularly the liberal sections, is that he is either a dangerous demagogue playing with fire or a plain imbecile incapable of articulating simple sentences. There is now a consistent pattern of making outrageous comments and then either denying it or accusing the media of misinterpreting it. Given his record of such reckless, offthe-cuff comments, even Republican pundits were hard put to defend the maverick billionaire, whose campaign is now descending into a farce.
Occasionally, Trump has spun his antics — such as asking the mother of a bawling infant to leave his rally — as a joke that the liberal media is incapable of understanding. But critics say if they were jokes they are delivered poorly and border on the infantile. No such jokey interpretation was given to the threat coming at the North Carolina rally, although one lawmaker said it was insensitive even as a joke, given the history of political assassinations in America. “That was more than a speed bump. That is actually a very arresting comment. It suggests either a very bad taste with reference to political assassination and an attempt at humor or an incredible insensitivity — it maybe the latter — an incredible insensitivity to the prevalence of political assassination inside of American history,” Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy said. Four of the 44 US presidents so far have been assassinated. Robert Kennedywas assassinated while running for the 1968 presidential nomination.