MARCH 12, 2016
Photo: POLITICO
This is getting really scary.
On Friday night, the organizers of a Donald Trump rally near the University of Illinois in Chicago called off a planned event when Trump supporters scuffled with protestors outside the venue. Meanwhile inside the arena, hundreds of other protestors, reported to be largely Latino and African-American, fanned out through the largely white Trump crowd, ready to protest the candidate’s appearance.
The cancellation of the Chicago rally, while arguably the most publicized case of antagonism at Trump rallies to date, is merely the culmination of months of hostilities at Trump gatherings. According to MSNBC’s Trump correspondent Katy Tur, there have been protestors at virtually every Trump event since the fall. Tur reported that, in the beginning, the protests were isolated, with only one or two protestors showing up inside the arenas. As they were inevitably taken away by the authorities, Trump would usually comment with a variation of “Get ’em outa here!”, not exactly calling for calm.
But in the last month, as Trump is being endorsed by white supremacist groups, as well as failing to quickly repudiate the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the racial tension has become more pronounced. Just this past week, as an African-American protestor was being led away, a 78 year-old white Trump supporter went out of his way to sucker punch the man. Instead of Trump security detaining the assailant, they instead threw the victim to the asphalt. Footage soon went viral of the assailant, John McGraw cold-cocking the protestor and promising that “the next time he shows up, we might have to kill him.” McGraw was finally arrested the next day on charges of assault & battery and disorderly conduct.
Also disturbing were charges by Michelle Fields, a reporter from the conservative website Breitbart, that she was personally manhandled by Trump’s own campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Fields quickly went on line to document the bruises she received allegedly at Lewandowski’s hands. The Trump’s campaign’s reaction? Lewandowski offered a quick denial that he did anything wrong, and the campaign charged that Fields was making the whole thing up.
That, in a nutshell, is how Trump and his campaign respond to these increasingly violent incidents at his events, a rise in violence that mirrors his rise in rhetoric. “Get ’em out of here” seems like a quaint response in comparison to Trump’s current retorts to protestors: “I’d like to punch him in the face,” “In the old days, [protestors would be] carried out on stretchers” and the always racially-loaded “Get a job!”
When asked about the violence at his events at Thursday night’s debate, Trump did not call for an end to the violence but instead defended his supporters’ violent actions.
“We have some protesters who are bad dudes, they have done bad things. They are swinging. They are really dangerous and they get in there and they start hitting people, and we had a couple of big strong powerful guys doing damage to people. Not only the loudness — the loudness I don’t mind — but doing serious damage.”
The Washington Post called many of the hundreds of reporters covering every Trump event, and not a single reporter recalls any incident like what Trump described ever happening. Who knows, maybe Trump is the one making the whole thing up.
Are the confrontations that occurred last night in Chicago an isolated incident? In a word, no. Just today at a Dayton OH rally, Trump dismissed last night’s events as part of a conspiracy by Moveon.org (wha?), and shortly afterward, the Secret Service had to surround the candidate as another protestor tried to rush the stage.
This campaign is getting really ugly really quickly. One thing, though, is becoming increasingly clear. If you traffic in violent rhetoric and don’t apologize for it, that violent tone is likely to come back and bite you in the ass.
