Donald Trump was speaking to an audience in Wilmington, NC today when he made a statement that media and other Democrats are claiming is a hint that Hillary Clinton should be assassinated to protect the Second Amendment.

“If she gets to pick her judges [shrugs his shoulders] there’s nothing you can do, folks.

Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Some pundits are interpreting what Trump said as a thinly veiled “dog whistle” to gun owners to assassinate Hillary Clinton to protect the Second Amendment. Others are interpreting Trump’s statement as a merely a bad joke.

The opportunistic Clinton campaign was thrilled for any opportunity to shift focus away from the fact that the Taliban-supporting father of the Pulse night club terrorist attended her most recent rally and sang her praises.

Trump’s campaign said that his statement was taken out of context.

 

The Trump campaign downplayed the controversy in a statement attacking the “dishonest media.”

“It’s called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power,” Jason Miller, a top Trump aide, said in the statement.

And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.”

Donald Trump has a long and storied history of  speaking off the cuff, a trait that many of his supporters find to be an endearing part of his charm. Unfortunately, when a candidate speaks off the cuff, they open themselves up to the possibility of saying something inartful. As Trump speaks from his heart more often and less from a teleprompter than the carefully-controlled Clinton, he has said things that the media has then blown wildly out of proportion, such as when the media claimed Trump threw a mother and baby out of a rally recently, a claim which was entirely false.

I’ve covered the Trump campaign for a while, and with a particular focus on his views on the Second Amendment. While he left himself open to be exploited by a serially dishonest media that has clearly chosen to support Hillary in this election, I don’t see anything to suggest that he was threatening violence against Mrs. Clinton.