Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday said that gun owners have it in their power to stop his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, a comment that sparked heated controversy when some interpreted it as a call for violence against his opponent.
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“The Secret Service is aware of the comments made earlier this afternoon”, the top law enforcement agency tweeted on Tuesday following Trump’s remarks.
It seems Trump’s latest foot-in-mouth debacle is no laughing matter.
By day’s end, Trump was drawing criticism on several fronts, another chapter in a campaign marked by bitterness and partisanship. “By the way, and if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks”, Trump said earlier in Wilmington.
“I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment”, she said in her Democratic National Convention speech. “I’m just telling you the way I accepted it”. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said: “This is simple – what Trump is saying is unsafe. Although the Second Amendment people – maybe there is, I don’t know”, Trump told supporters at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Donald Trump’s latest controversial comments did more than make it harder for him to win over undecided voters concerned about his temperament-it resurrected an ugly history of US violence at the presidential level. “But that is the problem: When you are the president of the United States you can’t do that”. He repeated his argument that Clinton poses a threat to gun rights, but avoided any talk about advocates taking matters into their own hands. Trump himself has embraced violent language as well, at one point in February saying that he’d like to punch a heckler in the face. “Because if you said that to me, I would say to you, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I saw it, I heard it, I know what it meant”.
“We must take people at their word”.
Asked whether Trump was suggesting violence, Pence said, “of course not, no. Donald Trump is urging people around this country to act in a manner consistent with their convictions in the course of this election, and people who cherish the Second Amendment have a very clear choice in this election”.
Trump later told Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” program that “nobody in that room” thought he meant anything other than to rally support against Clinton.
The NRA “agree [s] 100% with what I said and there can be no other interpretation”.
Trump’s reaction later as the uproar grew: “Give me a break”.
“Tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, “@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl”.
“So this is very important in November, if you care about your Second Amendment rights, to get out there and vote”.
Trump then noted the power Clinton would have to nominate justices to the high court.
The Clinton campaign has challenged Trump when in the past he has accused her of planning to abolish the Second Amendment if elected president. Trump claimed never to have mocked a disabled New York Times reporter despite a widely disseminated video clip showing him making jerking movements with his arms.
The pro-Clinton group Priorities USA blasted out an email with the subject line: “Donald Trump Just Suggested That Someone Shoot Hillary Clinton”.
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He pointed to the attendance by the father of the Orlando terrorist at a Hillary Clinton rally, and his comment that he supports Clinton in part because she’s good on national security.
