As we all know by now, Trump yesterday hinted that gun lovers could (or should? or would?) shoot Hillary Clinton and/or a Supreme Court nominee as a response to Hillary Clinton selecting judges for the Supreme Court. Here’s the comment and campaign responses in a nutshell:
The spin from the Trump campaign is laughable. Today, his campaign surrogates received the following talking points at 9:24 a.m. today:
The first point is simply “blaming the media”.
The second point spits right in the face of what everyone can see for themselves. And as for the people in attendance? Look at the reaction of the bearded old man sitting behind Trump (to the right of him from our standpoint). He says, “wow”. He knew what Trump was saying.
The third point is simply pivoting away from the subject.
As Trump’s words spread, Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, where a troubled young man massacred twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, took to Twitter. “This isn’t play,” he wrote. “Unstable people with powerful guns and an unhinged hatred for Hillary are listening to you, @realDonaldTrump.”
Gabby Giffords, an actual target of political assassination, issued the following statement via the New York Daily News:
“Donald Trump might astound Americans on a routine basis, but we must draw a bright red line between political speech and suggestions of violence. Responsible, stable individuals won’t take Trump’s rhetoric to its literal end, but his words may provide a magnet for those seeking infamy. They may provide inspiration or permission for those bent on bloodshed. What political leaders say matters to their followers. When candidates descend into coarseness and insult, our politics follow suit. When they affirm violence, we should fear that violence will follow. It must be the responsibility of all Americans – from Donald Trump himself, to his supporters, to those who remain silent or oppose him – to unambiguously condemn these remarks and the violence they insinuate. The integrity of our democracy and the decency of our nation is at stake.”
Joe Scarborough wrote that a line has been crossed and the GOP must now dump Trump.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.
His right-wing opponents just kept delegitimizing him as a “traitor” and “a Nazi” for wanting to make peace with the Palestinians and give back part of the Land of Israel. Of course, all is fair in politics, right? And they had God on their side, right? They weren’t actually telling anyone to assassinate Rabin. That would be horrible.
But there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The man is illegitimate, the man is a threat to the nation, the man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them.
Elizabeth Warren went for, and received, the Internet Win:
.@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) August 9, 2016
Over at Breitbart News, which I won’t link to, they were a little more honest about what Trump was saying, and agreed with it:
Trump did not suggest violence. Rather, he spoke in a way that reveals he recognizes the role an armed citizenry plays as a check on tyranny. This is James Madison 101. In Federalist 46, Madison observed that Americans are exceptional because armed and the benefit of being armed is the ability to repel tyranny. Repelling a tyranny is a defensive action, not an offensive one.
So, in Breitbart’s view, a president appointing judges you don’t like is “tyranny” which American are compelled to repel using guns. Uh, as a defense. (Not for nothing, but Federalist 46 relates to well-regulated state militias, commanded by officers, tossing off a tyrannical federal government, not armed citizen guerillas
But I digress.
IS this the worst thing Trump has ever said? Probably not. We probably don’t know the worst thing he has ever said. But during the campaign? It’s gotta be pretty high up there. Fortunately, Bloomberg came out with results of a poll which asked people how put off they were by the various Trump statements of this campaign. The results:
The mocking of the disabled reporter offended the most people. Followed by the Khan statements, followed by “I alone can fix it.”
I don’t think Trump’s “Second Amendment” solution is as offensive as the disability comment, although it is clearly more dangerous and disconcerting. I also don’t think it will move many minds. At this point, if you can swallow everything that Trump has said so far, you can swallow anything. Some people are just never going to come off that mark.
UPDATE: Trump implies that he meant to do that — the controversy helps him. Really. He subscribes to the theory that there is no such thing as bad press.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday night he’s benefitting from the controversy he created earlier in the day by suggesting “the Second Amendment people” might forcefully stop Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court justices. […]”I have to say, in terms of politics, there is few things, and I happen to think that if [the media] did even bring this up, I think it’s a good thing for me,” Trump told Sean Hannity.
“Because it’s going to tell people more about me with respect to the Second Amendment … because Hillary Clinton wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.”
Which is another one of Trump’s outlandish conspiracy theories that has been debunked multiple times over.