Opinion: Was Trump’s 2nd Amendment reference clumsy phrasing, or a call to violence?
When is a threat a threat? Donald Trump a short time ago seemed to suggest that members of the National Rifle Assn. could do something about a President Hillary Clinton appointing anti-gun Supreme Court justices.
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the 2nd Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said, then paused before adding: “Although the 2nd Amendment people, maybe there is.”
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A Trump spokesman quickly sought to frame the comment as a call to political action and for NRA voters to support him instead of Clinton. But the reaction of a Trump supporter standing behind the candidate, and caught on video, made it clear that the message received was something completely different.
This is one of the many recurring problems with Trump. He uses suggestion and innuendo to frame some incredibly vile thoughts, including suggesting President Obama may have willfully stood down in the face of terrorist attacks, the “many people are saying” construct he used Monday to suggest Clinton was responsible for the Iranian government’s hanging of a nuclear scientist, and his suggestion that Russian hackers try to find Clinton’s missing emails.
Then he denies it, claiming his was misunderstood, or his words were taken out of context, or the “dishonest” media have it in for him. Trump’s shrugs and walk-backs are disturbing, particularly his denials of comments caught on video.
But Trump’s comment today goes much farther than impugning someone’s patriotism, trying to undercut someone’s political standing or perverting the truth for the sake of an electoral victory.
Trump’s one-liner is a statement that a reasonable person can take to mean a call to assassination. Trump — and not his aides — needs to explain in no uncertain terms that that was not his intent, and apologize, instead of having his surrogates spin it as a media invention.
And if he doesn’t, he needs to have a conversation not with his advisors, but with the Secret Service.
Follow my posts and re-tweets at @smartelle on Twitter
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