No, Donald Trump Did Not Just Suggest Hillary Clinton Should Be Assassinated

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.

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“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.

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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.”

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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.

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