Rachel Maddow Lays Out How Donald Trump Deliberately Incites Violence At His Rallies
It's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.
On Saturday night, a planned Donald Trump rally in Chicago was cancelled after thousands of protesters both in and outside the venue clashed with Trump supporters. The violent scenes in Chicago have prompted horrified responses from politicians, the media and police, with other Republican Presidential candidates like Florida Senator Marco Rubio warning that if the political climate continues to worsen, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. “There are people out there that are not balanced. There are people out there that are not completely in control of themselves, and they hear something like this from a leader, you don’t know what they’re going to do next,” Rubio told CNN yesterday.
More scenes of protests and police presence at the now-postponed #TrumpRally in Chicago https://t.co/UYpqI3w42L https://t.co/ygLtOcyl0r
— CNN (@CNN) March 12, 2016
The violence in Chicago is by no means a one-off; there have been numerous instances of Trump supporters physically attacking protesters at Trump rallies. Disturbingly, Trump himself has encouraged his supporters to violence from the podium, saying he’ll pay the legal fees of anyone who punches a protester and waxing lyrical on “the good old days” when protesters could be treated roughly.
When viewed to scale, the pattern of a leading Presidential candidate egging on his supporters to violence paints a frightening picture. In a segment that went to air over the weekend, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow laid out the consistent and alarming rise of Trump-related violence, tying it back to the language and behaviour of the man at the centre of it all.
“American Presidential politics did not get this way on its own” Maddow said. “This is the work of an American Presidential candidate who deliberately made this happen. And the Republican Party is about to nominate him for President.”