Friday’s cancelled rally followed weeks of escalating tensions between protesters and some attendees at Trump’s rallies, scuffles that have gone viral on social media.
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Trump blamed Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for the fighting. “We want Trump!” in response to the celebrations, and there were some isolated physical confrontations between members of the crowd.
“I hope that we are not in a moment in American history where people are going to be intimidated and roughed up and frightened about going to a political rally….”
“It is anger against incompetence”, Trump said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Protesters yell at supporters of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from across the street before a campaign rally at the downtown Midland Theater in Kansas City, Missouri, March 12, 2016.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio: Said it is “harder every day to justify” backing Mr Trump should he win the Republican nomination and said conservatism is not about “how angry can you get, how offensive you can be, how loud you can speak”. “John McCain. Who insults everybody who is not like him”. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, closest to Trump in the delegate count, has urged both to drop out so he can take on the front-runner in a head-to-head contest.
“What our supporters are responding to is a candidate who has in fact in many ways encouraged violence”, he said.
Trump said then, “No they took him out”.
“There are people out there that listen to this stuff and we don’t know how they’re going to react”, Rubio said on ABC’s This Week.
“I’m not a person that wants to see violence”. Trump backers were separated from an equally large crowd of anti-Trump protesters by a heavy police presence and barricades. But our campaign has never, not once, organized any effort to disrupt Mr. Trump’s rallies or anybody else’s rallies.
The arena where the event took place is at the University of IL at Chicago, a diverse, big-city campus. Secret Service officers rushed on stage to protect Trump when a man broke through a security barrier at a rally in Ohio.
He also noted that Kasich’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and his stance on immigration.
“We shouldn’t let racism happen like this”, said Rivas, who was shouting “F*** Trump” as Trump supporters drove out of the garage.
“We can not create in this country a toxic environment where images of people slugging it out at a campaign rally, think about it, are transmitted all over the globe”, he said.
Asked what he would tell a Trump supporter, Rivas said, “This is wrong”. Police were not consulted before this decision was made, according to spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, and he said police did not issue any public safety threats or safety risks before the cancellation. But it said the protest was the “direct result of the violence that has occurred at Trump rallies and that has been repeatedly encouraged by Trump himself from the stage”.
“I certainly do not condone that at all”, Trump said, adding, “We have some protesters who are bad dudes”.
The billionaire candidate has been accused of fuelling racism with his rhetoric and Trump opponents have grown increasingly irate over what they see as inflammatory comments against everyone from Mexican immigrants to Muslims.
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A Chicago police spokesman said that city law enforcement authorities were not consulted and had no role in canceling the event.
