Trump keeps up Clinton gun jokes
Mulls if her security will disarm due to support for control
MIAMI — Donald Trump invoked the possibility of a violent assault on Hillary Clinton once again on Saturday, a day after he suggested that her Secret Service bodyguards disarm and “let’s see what happens.”
In a post Saturday morning on Twitter, Trump falsely accused Clinton of trying to take away Americans’ Second Amendment rights, just as he did Friday night at a Miami rally where he said her Secret Service agents should “drop all weapons.”
“Will guns be taken from her heavily armed Secret Service detail? Maybe not!” Trump tweeted.
Trump said Friday night that Clinton’s Secret Service detail should disarm because she supports gun control. “What do you think, yes?” he asked the crowd. “Take their guns away. She doesn’t want guns. Let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK? It would be very dangerous.”
Trump hasn’t uttered the word “assassination,” but his joking concerning firearms is unique in modern presidential politics. The GOP nominee also has condoned violence by his supporters against hecklers who disrupt his rallies.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Trump’s comments in Miami fit a disturbing pattern of encouraging violence.
“Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of commander in chief,” he said in a statement.
At the rally in downtown Miami, Trump told several thousand supporters that his Democratic rival “goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before.”
“I think they should disarm immediately,” said Trump, who also travels with a large armed Secret Service detail.
Trump had previously joked about forcing Clinton’s bodyguards to give up their firearms but hadn’t invoked a possible attack so overtly.
Last month, critics called Trump reckless and dangerous for telling a North Carolina crowd there was nothing they could do about Clinton naming judges if she’s elected, “although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Trump’s Miami rally came just hours after he conceded for the first time that President Barack Obama was born in the U.S., and the racial politics in his remarks were raw.
Trump, whose years of spreading conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth helped make him deeply unpopular among AfricanAmericans, made no reference to the “birther” matter in Miami.
But he faulted Clinton and other Democrats for questioning his devotion to helping black residents of urban areas.
“They talk all the time about racist, racist — the only word they know,” he said.
Pence’s health
INDIANAPOLIS — Mike Pence has released a doctor’s letter vouching for his “excellent” health. It summarizes the medical history of the GOP vice presidential nominee and says he can maintain his high level of work “without limitations.”
The letter about the 57-year-old governor of Indiana was dated Thursday and came after Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, also provided some details of their health.
Pence’s letter is by Dr. Michael Busk with the St. Vincent Health, Wellness and Preventive Care Institute in Indianapolis.
Trump told the crowd he employed many people at his resorts in the Miami area — “a lot of African-American employees, a lot of Hispanic employees.”
“And they’re very happy,” he added.
Trump’s derogatory remarks about Mexicans, Muslims, women and other groups have led critics in both parties to call him a racist and misogynist. Over the last month, he has tried to remake his image by casting himself as a champion of poor blacks and Latinos, whom he says Democrats have neglected.