Monday at a town hall featuring Hillary Clinton in MSNBC, the Democratic presidential front-runner said Republican front-runner Donald Trump was “inciting mob violence.”
Clinton said, “You have someone like Trump, a demagogue, a showman, an inciter, who is actually fanning the flames instead of trying to, as we saw in that clip from Bobby Kennedy, trying to bring down the passion so that people could work together to find common ground. That’s what we need today in America.”
She continued, “I think certainly the fact that Trump led the campaign to try to de-legitimize President Obama from the very beginning. He used this phony issue about where he was born. There was definite proof we knew where he was born. it didn’t matter. Trump kept beating that drum and kept trying to, again, incite people to be hostile toward the president, who happened to be the first African-American president. That sent a lot of signals. Not just to African-Americans, but to all Americans—wait a minute, what’s going on here? But I think it’s more than that. You know, when you are inciting mob violence, which is what Trump is doing in those clips, there are a lot of memories that people have. They’re in the DNA. People remember mob violence that led to lynching. People remember mob violence that led to people being shot, being, you know, being mistreated. And it’s something that has a deep, almost psychological resonance to people who have ever been in any position of feeling somewhat fearful, somewhat worried. We’ve come so far in our country, that to be here in this state capitol, in this room, where Abraham Lincoln gave that speech about a house divided, and to see that someone who is vying to be president of the United States is using divisiveness, is stoking fear, is pointing fingers, scapegoating against all kinds of people, I think is so dangerous. And yes, it’s wrong, it’s offensive, it’s also dangerous.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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