Donald Trump set off a fierce new controversy Tuesday with remarks about the right to bear arms that were interpreted by many as a threat of violence against Hillary Clinton.
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Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Mike Pence, said “it’s absolutely essential that we get to the bottom of this”. “Although the Second Amendment people. maybe there is, I don’t know”.
The GOP candidate’s distortion of Clinton’s position on the Second Amendment and his comments Tuesday prove “how risky Trump really is”, said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, said in a statement that Trump was merely talking about Second Amendment supporters large influence as a group.
“It’s called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have awesome spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power”, senior Trump communications adviser Jason Miller said.
In an email with the subject, “Trump Campaign Statement on Dishonest Media”, a Trump spokesman said gun rights supporters will back the NY businessman in record numbers this November. Her campaign said in a statement that Trump “should not suggest violence in any way” on the trail. “A person seeking to be president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way”.
The idea inside Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters: If Clinton is within striking distance in Arizona and Georgia, two state that haven’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since the ’90s, Trump has a narrow path to 270 electoral votes. He added that none of that is clear, but “the American people have the right to know”.
On Monday, Trump had seemed to be heeding Republican advice to keep to a message of criticizing Clinton and other Democrats when he put forward economic policy proposals in a speech in Detroit.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, campaigning with Trump on Tuesday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, slammed the media and the Clinton campaign.
Trump’s campaign quickly issued a statement clarifying that he doesn’t want anyone to shoot Hillary Clinton – so don’t go saying campaign decorum is dead. Though that’s all hypothetical, as an outside group that takes its cues from the Clinton campaign says it has no plans now to play in Arizona and Georgia.
The National Rifle Association, the gun lobby that has endorsed Trump, came to his defense.
Clinton’s supporters are hoping the latest Trump trip-up will lead yet more of his fellow Republicans to defect.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, who supports increased gun control measures, tweeted: “Don’t treat this as a political misstep”.
Trump responded with a statement deriding the signatories as members of “the failed Washington elite” who “deserve the blame for making the world such a unsafe place”.
“I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment”, she said in her Democratic National Convention speech.
Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, said Trump’s remarks show “just no understanding for the role of leader”.
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Iran executed Amiri this week for spying for the United States, acknowledging for the first time that the nation secretly detained and tried a man who was once heralded as a hero.
