Donald Trump, who has turned the Republican nomination battle into a grotesque reality show, blames protests at his rallies on Bernie Sanders:
“Bernie was saying, Mr. Trump should speak to his crowd,” he said. “You know where they come from? Bernie’s crowd,” Trump added, talking about the protesters at his events.
“Get ’em out,” Trump said, as a protester disrupted his Saturday afternoon rally.
Trump said “Bernie’s people” were constantly disrupting his rallies “every five minutes.” Addressing Chicago, he said, “We had a little bit of a problem. Wewere not allowed to exercise our First Amendment rights.”
Sanders responded:
As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar. Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests. What caused the protests at Trump’s rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division against Latinos, Muslims, women, and people with disabilities, and his birther attacks against the legitimacy of President Obama.
Recently Jimmy Fallon quipped, “Sunday night was the series finale of ‘Downton Abbey.’ But don’t worry, if you still want to hear a bunch of rich white people talking like it’s the 1920s, tune in to the next Republican debate.” Fallon might be a decade off, with Donald Trump rallies turning into what I imagine Germany might have been like in the 1930’s.
As is common with statements from dishonest politicians such as Donald Trump, there is a tiny grain of fact in what he says in that those protesting against Trump included many Sanders supporters. It is no surprise as any millennials engaging in principled political activity this year are most likely to be supporting Sanders. However, there is no connection between their actions and the Sanders’ campaign. While Bernie Sanders has never advocated violence, Donald Trump has, making him responsible for the situation.
Mashable has summarized the large number of occasions when Donald Trump has promoted violence at his rallies. Ezra Klein has discussed Trump’s ideology of violence:
During a rally in St. Louis Friday, Donald Trump lamented that “nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”
Yes, lamented.
The topic was protesters, and Trump’s frustration was clear. “They’re being politically correct the way they take them out,” he sighed. “Protesters, they realize there are no consequences to protesting anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore.”
“Our country has to toughen up folks. We have to toughen up. These people are bringing us down. They are bringing us down. These people are so bad for our country, you have no idea.”This is more than an aside; this is the core of Trump’s ideology. The protesters who interrupted his rally, the political correctness that kept the police from cracking their skulls, the press that takes the hippies’ side — this is why America has stopped being great. We were strong, and we were tough, and we didn’t take this kind of shit from anybody. And now we are weak, and we are scared, and we take this kind of shit from everybody…
…What Trump is offering is an explanation and a solution; an argument and an ideology. It is dangerous, and it is violent, but it is not confusing, and it is not unclear.
And this is why Trump is something different and more dangerous in American life. He is a man with an evident appetite for suppressing dissent with violence, a man who believes America’s problem is that it’s too gentle to its dissidents. Trump is making an argument for a politics backed by force, for a security service unleashed from “political correctness,” for a country where protesting has consequences. The results are playing out before us, night after night, on our televisions.
If Trump wins and this country goes down a dark path, we will never be able to say we didn’t see it coming. We will never be able to say we weren’t warned.
As I recently pointed out, if the current front runners go on to win their party’s nomination, we are in a dark timeline. Both Greater Evil Trump and Lesser Evil Clinton are pathological liars who have no respect for civil liberties. Trump advocates violence at home, while Clinton is a dangerous warmonger who would probably be responsible for far greater violence around the world if elected. It is regrettable that some liberal bloggers, who are more concerned with party loyalty than principle, see the danger from one candidate and not the other.