Fighting talk
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was dispatched yesterday to defend President Donald Trump’s tweets about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. When a reporter noted that just two weeks ago, after the shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice, the political world talked of cooling the rhetoric to avoid such violence, Sanders was quick to respond: “The President in no way, form or fashion, has ever encouraged any form of violence.” The truth is Trump clearly nodded toward violence at his campaign rallies. Here’s a little trip down memory lane:
August 2015
Trump attacked Bernie Sanders for letting Black Lives Matter protesters hijack his stage and said that kind of thing would be physically stopped at one of his events. “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will,” he clarified.
November 2015
“Get him the hell out of here, will you, please?” Trump said of a protester. “Get him out of here. Throw him out!” The next day, after video emerged of the protester being treated roughly, Trump said the man was “so obnoxious and so loud” that “maybe he should have been roughed up”.
February 2016
Trump said after someone threw a tomato at a rally: “If you see somebody with a tomato, knock the crap out of them.”
March 2016
“We have had a couple [ protesters] that were really violent, and the particular one when I said I’d like to bang him, that was a very — he was a guy who was swinging, very loud and started swinging at the audience and the audience swung back, and I thought it was very, very appropriate.” Trump added: “He was swinging, he was hitting people, and the audience hit back, and that’s what we need.” Trump couched this as self- defence but reporters said they never saw protesters initiating violence.
March 2016
Again talking about someone rushing the stage: “I don’t know if I would have done well, but I would have been out there fighting, folks. I don’t know if I’d have done well, but I would’ve been — boom boom boom boom.” Trump then mouthed, “I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
March 2016
“Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?” “In the good old days this doesn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough.”
March 2016
Trump suggested he would pay the legal fees of those who remove protesters if they get sued. “Get him out,” Trump said. “Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court, don’t worry about it.”