The Post story by Antonia Noori Farzan continues –
The president has long been accused of endorsing acts of violence through his incendiary rhetoric and allusions to the potential for violence at his rallies, a charge that members of his administration deny.
Reached for comment by The Washington Post on Trump’s reaction at the Florida rally, Matt Wolking, deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, pointed to a response he had given to many critics on Twitter. The president, he noted in his tweet, had specifically said that Border Patrol wouldn’t use firearms to stop migrants from entering the country.
Shameless ratbag. If you watch the video you can see that Trump said the Border Patrol can’t use firearms and that he made it breathtakingly obvious that he wishes they could.
And I mean “breathtakingly” literally here. The whole thing has taken my breath away.
The incendiary remark from the crowd came as Trump, standing before about 7,000 people who had gathered at an outdoor amphitheater in the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast town, railed against what he described as an “invasion” of migrants attempting to enter the United States. Often, he claimed, “two or three” border agents will contend with the arrival of “hundreds and hundreds of people.”
“And don’t forget, we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons,” Trump said of the border agents. “We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?”
“But.” That “but” makes nonsense of ratbag Matt Wolking’s shameless pretense that Trump was ruling out violence.
The fans seated directly behind Trump wore serious, perturbed frowns, which were quickly replaced by broad grins after the shouted suggestion that the solution involved firearms. Uproarious laughter rippled across the room as audience members whistled and offered a round of applause.
Haw haw haw haw; slaughtering helpless civilians is so hilarious.
To critics, Trump’s failure to outright condemn the idea of shooting migrants amounted to a “tacit endorsement” of the sentiment. Many pointed out that such rhetoric was especially concerning in light of the fact that an armed militia group, the United Constitutional Patriots, had been searching the borderlands for undocumented migrants and detaining them against their will.
Oh? I missed that.
Last month, after the group’s leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, was arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the FBI said thatthe 69-year-old claimed militia members were training to assassinate former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and prominent Democratic donor George Soros.
Trump would smirk and grin and laugh and clap about that, too.
During a trip to Texas last month, Trump complained that “everybody would go crazy” if soldiers deployed to the border got “a little rough” with migrants. Border Patrol agents, similarly, would be arrested if they “get tough” with people in custody, he lamented.
And Wednesday’s rally is only the latest example of Trump laughing off brutality — or even allegedly condoning it. As The Post’s Aaron Blake has documented, he has a long history of making subtle and not-so-subtle nods toward violence, and encouraged his supporters to rough up protesters at his rallies on more than one occasion during his 2016 campaign.
At a rally in October, Trump lavished praise on Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) for assaulting a reporter during his bid for Congress, calling the congressman “my guy.” More recently, in March, the president suggested that his supporters could potentially be tempted to rise up in response to any efforts to remove him from office.
He has to go.