CAMPAIGNS WEARING ON AMERICAN VOTERS
Trump blamed for fanning flames of hatred
Majorities of Republicans and Democrats say the election has left them helpless and frustrated.
It started with Mexicans being publicly compared by presidential candidate Donald Trump to criminals and rapists. It escalated to ejections, to sucker punches, to pepper spray. And now violence and strife seems to be a commonplace occurrence out on the campaign trail.
They are just a few instances of the tensions that have surfaced in the contentious 2016 presidential campaign, where hostilities have revolved around the ascendancy of Trump, first toward minorities and now by minorities protesting his policies.
In San Diego on Friday, protesters waved Mexican flags, shouted obscenities and clashed with police outside a Trump rally, while inside, Trump made derisive comments about Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who is hearing a class-action lawsuit against one of Trump’s business ventures, noting that Curiel is Mexican-American as he called the judge a “hater” who had “railroaded” him.
On Tuesday, protesters in New Mexico opposing Trump threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, injuring several, and toppled trash cans and barricades. Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.
Karla Molinar, 21, a University of New Mexico student, participated in a planned disruption of Trump’s speech and said she had no choice because Trump is sparking hatred of Mexican immigrants. Trump, among other things, has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and declared that he will build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Trump is causing the hate to get worse,” she said.
Earlier this year, demonstrators against Trump swarmed outside the hotel near San Francisco airport, forcing the candidate Trump to crawl under a fence to enter the hotel where he met with local GOP power brokers. Other protesters tangled with authorities and damaged police cars after a Trump rally in Orange County, Calif.
While political violence is not unknown, like the 1968 violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where 119 police and 100 protesters were injured, rarely has it been targeted so specifically at minorities, said Matt Dallak, a professor of political management in the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.
He also laid much of the responsibility on Trump.
“When you are whipping people up, it contributes to an atmosphere that leads to the potential of political violence. Words matter,” he said.