Republican Donald Trump suggested in a speech on Tuesday that gun rights activists could stop his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from nominating liberal justices to the Supreme Court, stirring another round of backlash during a week his US presidential campaign had hoped to steer clear of controversy.
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In the ad, a narrator says she is “one of the wealthiest women in politics” with a “combined income of $30 million”. “The Clinton people – this is how corrupt they are -they spin out that what he meant by that was that it was a joke and what he meant by that was is that they would kill her”. She has said she wants to protect the right to bear arms.
Did Donald Trump just suggest people could shoot Hillary Clinton? Many no doubt assumed Mr. Trump to be recycling ugly tea party rhetoric that contemplates “Second Amendment remedies”, a term former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle used in her 2010 campaign to suggest armed resistance to government “tyranny”. “This is a strong political movement, the Second Amendment”, Trump said to Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Trump’s campaign quickly responded to critics, saying that any suggestion that the billionaire businessman was advocating violence against Clinton was a media overreaction. No; Mr. Trump was talking about what would happen if Ms. Clinton were elected.
Beyond the usual conservative suspects, it wasn’t that well-received, but it reassured the right people that Trump is still a serious candidate for president (although the rest of us know better).
The controversy immediately overwhelmed Trump’s intended campaign-trail focus: the economic plan he unveiled just a day earlier and was promoting during a series of rallies in the most competitive general election states.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the liberal Democrat who has tangled frequently with Trump online, said on Twitter that Trump “makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl”.
Lemire reported from NY.
“It’s called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have fantastic spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power”.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of CT, the state where 20 schoolchildren and six adult staff were shot dead by a deranged gunman at an elementary school in 2012, issued a stern rebuke of Trump for his comments.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which has endorsed Clinton, said Trump was encouraging gun violence “based on conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton”. “A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way”.
Later in the day, Trump had settled on a different explanation – that he was referring to the “tremendous political power” of gun owners and the National Rifle Association.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook didn’t take Trump’s comments as a get-out-the-vote message.
“If Hillary Clinton gets elected, I think she’s going to decimate the Second Amendment, if not abolish it”.
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“What he meant was, you have the power to vote against her”, Giuliani said.
