With Trump’s position in the polls continuing its downward slide, The Donald winkingly suggested to his “second amendment people” at a rally today that they could, you know, assassinate her if (when?) he loses the race.
This is probably not news to anyone reading this, but if you haven’t watched the video itself yet, it’s even creepier than a mere transcript. He and his apologists have tried to spin this one away but there is no credible way to “explain” this as anything other than a call for the literal assassination of a political rival.
We need to do everything possible to keep this man from being elected. Do we also need to prepare for what might happen if (when?) he loses? How exactly, I’m not sure. Obviously the solution to Trump supporters with guns is not Hillary supporters with guns.
Discuss. No MRAs/Trump apologists/calls for revolution, etc.
Axecalibur
So it was a LITERAL hit list of the Democrats who voted for Obamacare in those states! I get ya. That is really fucked up, targeting them for ‘elimination’ the way they did, of course they did not mean it like thhaaat. ***shivers***
Jesus Christ! I live in the UK, but it’s actually scary people like this can run for president of a country as big and influential as the US.
Presidential candidate of superpower suggests – in the strongest possible terms while still retaining legally plausible deniability – that he would like to take a hit out on his opponent. That’s … actually still quite shocking, even given Trump’s track record.
At least it’s likely to displease a lot of people who, even if they love the GOP and loathe Clinton, tend to believe in the rule of law and would really rather disapprove of any elected president of the USA or supreme court judges getting assassinated.
Holy shit, though.
Good grief!
I’ve always found Trump pretty scary, but this takes the biscuit.
Especially his “You tell me, I didn’t say it, some might say it, but I didn’t say it (I said it)” winky sneaky mindgames.
Power without responsibility, constant deniability.
I haven’t seen it mentioned, but just after the 2nd amendment comment, Trump talked about Scalia:
Is it just me or is he dogwhistling about the conspiracy theory that Scalia was assassinated so that Obama could appoint his successor? To me, that makes the first comment even more dangerous because not only is it an invitation to violence, but it comes with its own justification: the enemy took out one of ours, now we’re gonna have to take out one of theirs.
You’re right ; it’s a dangerous comment.
Wasn’t Scalia like 80 years old ? In imaginary trumpland, people never die of old age ?
He was “supposed” to live and serve another 10 years? What?
Human mortality: yet another anti-gun conspiracy.
Sounds to me like a call for the literal assassination of a political rival and any Judges she gets appointed who may disagree with the Rightwing interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
Very shocked that this will not put an end to Trump’s Presidential campaign. I suppose in 2020, we’ll have straight up White Supremacists like David Duke leading the Republican Party.
@Ohlmann
A month short of 80, overweight, smoker with high blood pressure and a history of heart issues. It’s not surprising at all that he just didn’t wake up one day.
The conspiracy theories started right away despite Scalia’s age:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/02/15/and-the-scalia-conspiracy-theories-begin/
The second amendment bullshit again. It was meant to refer to militia opposing British rule. (And controlling run away slaves) it belongs in the past, not with these these ‘survivalist doom cult’ whackadoodles. I think it was Jesus who said ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’, these folk live by the gun and will die by the gun too. Gun control is a nonsense. There is nothing stopping people getting guns and killing folk, legally or illegally. It worries me when I see the EDL zealots in England clashing with Antifas, and I’m just glad guns aren’t a part of our culture.
Semi-unrelated : to describe the strange and inconsistent land the various conspirationist and other out-there, I used imaginary trumpland, but is there a better, more generic term ? I guess most people would use “in their crazy dreamland”, but maybe there is something else ?
@ohlmann
Cloud Cuckooland?
Trump’s whole campaign has been one long series of boundary tests to see what he can get away with. What obnoxious thing can he say, which powerless person can he humiliate, which bedrock principle of democracy can he make a mockery of? The media doesn’t bat an eye when he says X, so tomorrow he’ll say X + 1, then X + 2, and so on. He’s crossed so many seemingly taboo boundaries, and there’s no end in sight. I’m starting to think he was right when he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and not lose any voters.
It’s the same playbook bullies and PUAs use to signal high social status to their friends: start with small indignities, progress to name calling, escalate to threats and physical force, keep going as long as possible. The game is all about seeing how far they can go with their victim. The more blatantly outrageous Trump is, the more his supporters love him. He’s living their fantasy of unlimited, consequence-free power.
Statements that would have fatally sunk any other candidate just seem to roll off him. Sedition, assassination, violence, making fun of a disabled reporter, cozying up to Putin, throwing babies and the Constitution out of his rallies – hey, all good! It’s baffling, and it makes me wonder if America is too far gone to recover. Trump will go away eventually, but the conditions that enabled him won’t. He’s left the door open for a more competent fascist demagogue.
@virgin : the problem is that a cloud cuckoolander designate a madman originally, at least in my memory. I don’t think it’s offensive, but it’s not just me who have something to say for that.
@Buttercup : I agree with your comparison of Trump with a bully, but I think he *is* starting to melt down and his past is starting to catch up with him. There is a reason for which his polls and projections have started to drop off.
He will remain popular with his core demographic of poor, disenfranchised white people. But with the rest ?
There’s a reason why conservatives are starting to quote Jefferson less. He was more to the left of other Enlightenment-influenced people in the 1790’s and made many pro-insurrection comments in support of the French Revolution. His support for states’ rights and the right to bear arms was in the context of a conservative national elite that wanted to suppress civil liberties out of fear of French radicalism (slavery wasn’t a “states’ rights” issue yet).
He became more conservative as he got older and conservatives like him in that period, but he had less political influence by then.
As a practical matter, people said the second amendment gives a right to rebellion but almost nobody supported that in practice. In any case, the right to rebellion usually meant that the rebels had some sort of organization and lawful authority and it didn’t mean terrorism or spontaneous insurrection. Partly, the second amendment was about a right to protect yourself because most towns didn’t have a police force in the modern sense, just a night watch and a decentralized militia.
@Ohlmann
Someone already reference Wonka, so how about ‘in a world of pure imagination’?
Even if we take Trump at his word that he didn’t mean it as an assassination call, this controversy still shows he is not fit to be president. He can’t even communicate clearly and concisely to people from the same culture who speak the same language. How is he supposed to conduct any sort of diplomacy in other countries without losing allies, getting us into war, accidentally revealing our and other nation’s state secrets and whatever other diplomatic disaster one can imagine?
Virgin Mary, you just insulted Unikitty.
Oh, so it’s another Trump Says Something Awful week.
I was surprised by this one, though. “Going too far” is an understatement.
@Ibis – I don’t know, but your explanation makes sense! I was confused by that part – of course deaths aren’t considered happy things, but the emphasis Trump put on “this is horrible” seemed odd.
@Ohlmann, @Virgin Mary – As the comments policy points out, “crazy” and similar words are often used in ableist ways. But “Trumpland” seems like a good word! The guy always uses his name as a brand, after all.
I don’t know about that.
538 blog’s current election forecast has Clinton with 354.2 electoral votes, Trump with 183.3 and Johnson with .5. Of course we still have plenty of time left before election day, but still. Every traditional swing state is medium or light blue and AZ and GA which are normally red states are currently toss ups. The 2012 election was considered a big and decisive victory for Obama and he got 332 to Romney’s 206. And it could potentially get even worse for Trump. People are only now starting to pay close attention to the race and there hasn’t been any debates yet. It’s almost certain he’ll get humiliated.
We sure can’t rest on our laurels and everybody left leaning or centrist needs to get out and vote and make damn sure Trump receives a drubbing on election day though! You just never know what’ll happen.
Here’s the link http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo
Ran out of edit time, but the other pieces of good news is that Clinton is up by .4% in GA. Yes, that’s tiny. But it’s a red state. Also Trump is only up by .1 in AZ. There was a poll in Kansas having Clinton winning the state. It could be outlier and it’s looking at 538, not enough to have the state out of the red shades there. But KS is a quite conservative state. It’s pretty astounding that they’re even part of the conversation. They never are.
Also, they have the chances of a Clinton landslide (double digit popular vote) at nearly 1/3.
Sorry if any of my posts seem splainy. I’m probably not saying anything fellow USians don’t know, I’m more explaining for the benefits of Mammotheers who aren’t as familiar with our silly, silly system.
I seriously wonder if Trump’s reality TV background has something to do with all this and his general style.
The people who design, and pick candidates for, shows like Big Brother make the point that being brash and confrontational can be a winning strategy. Viewers might hate them, but they won’t vote against them because they want to see what outrageous thing they do next. It’s the same mentality that makes shows like Jerry Springer so popular.
Maybe he overheard someone mention this and he’s adopted that as a philosophy. Of course aiming for the highest office in the US isn’t a game; but he doesn’t seem to realise that.
ETA: ultimatly of course the horrible candidate usually loses in the final to the nice candidate having served their purpose, so fingers crossed.
Axecalibur: Please don’t ruin that song for me. 😛
This isn’t even the first time a republican has gotten in trouble for suggesting “Second Amendment Remedies” if the vote didn’t go their way:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html
Much of the right has been painting Obama as a dictatorial tyrant forcing his imperial will on the American People for the past 8 years. A significant chunk of the GOP is primed to believe that a moderate member of the Democratic Party is the next coming of Josef Stalin.
@WWTH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnI25Pu19k
Couldn’t hurt to drop this, just in case. How to register, how to research downticket stuff via sample ballots, etc…