On August 10 – one day after being savagely attacked for describing Hillary Clinton’s plan to “abolish the Second Amendment” – Donald Trump doubled down and pointed out that the media is simply distracting from the fact that the Second Amendment is “under siege.”
Trump was speaking to a group of miners in Abingdon, Virginia, when he listed the Second Amendment as one of the things being targeted by Democrats in general and Clinton in particular.
According to the AP, Trump talked about the “rigged” political system that he has to fight against while also fighting his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He cited the press who savagely attacked him on August 9 as “a big part of the rigged system.” He said the press “can take a little story, that isn’t a story, and make it big deal.”
He then transitioned from describing the press’s bald attacks to showing that the attacks are meant to distract from Clinton’s efforts to destroy the Second Amendment. Trump said, “We have so many things that we have to protect in this country. We have to protect our Second Amendment, which is under siege.”
On August 9, Trump told an Wilmington, North Carolina audience that “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.” He added, “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But — but I’ll tell you what. That will be a horrible day. If Hillary gets to put her judges — right now, we’re tied.”
The press distracted from the dire warnings of impending doom for the Second Amendment by seizing on Trump’s acknowledgement that the “Second Amendment people” may have some say in things. The press twisted Trump’s statements by taking this one phrase out of context and suggesting Trump was talking about offensive action against an individual. To accomplish this, the press not only rejected the context of Trump’s entire statement but also completely overlooked Founding Father James Madison’s sentiment that Second Amendment people do in fact have a role to play in the balance of power in this country. In Federalist 46, Madison made clear that Americans are exceptional because they are armed to defend themselves against a central government that becomes tyrannical.
So when Trump talks about the press being part of the “rigged” system he is talking about their method of perverting his central message in order to insert their own and distract from the fact that the Second Amendment is “under siege.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.