With Congress in play, Trump warns of 'violence'
Is he serious? Does President Donald Trump really think there will be "violence" from the left if Republicans lose control of Congress in the November mid-terms? Isn't the whole point of winning an election to get what you want without turning to violence?
Yet, "violence" was in Trump's forecast in a closed-door meeting with evangelical leaders Monday at the White House, according to audio reportedly obtained by NBC and The New York Times.
"They will overturn everything that we've done, and they'll do it quickly and violently, and violently," Trump said. "There's violence. When you look at Antifa, and you look at some of these groups -- these are violent people."
Sometimes. But antifa, a loosely knit, far-left movement, tends to live up to its name, which is short for "anti-fascist," by showing up at far-right-wing events, such as the infamous rally by torch-bearing white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., last year.
Remember? After one of the neo-Nazis drove his car into a peaceful crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others, Trump put "blame on both sides," then shamelessly added that there also were some "very fine people on both sides," including the side that included the neo-Nazis.
Is Trump serious? Or is he just describing a movie that's playing in his own head?
After all, Trump has hardly been a peacenik when it comes to cheerleading for violence. After a protester interrupted a Las Vegas rally in February 2016, he growled, "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell ya."
"Get him out!," he said as a protester was escorted out of another rally in Warren, Mich., in March 2016. "Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court."
At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he told supporters to "knock the crap out of" would-be hecklers. At another rally, less than a month after Trump said he wanted to punch a protester in the face, one of his supporters actually did.
Yet Trump told the religious leaders, "The level of hatred, the level of anger is unbelievable" on the left, as if his own habit of rooting for violence was not well known.
...continued
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
