Politics

No, liberal media propagandists, Trump did not advocate Hillary’s assassination

Trump - Second AmendmentWhile speaking at a campaign rally on Tuesday, GOP nominee Donald Trump warned that if elected, Hillary Clinton would select far-left justices to serve on the Supreme Court and would essentially eliminate the Second Amendment.  His comment, naturally, caused the entire Democrat-media complex and their low-information followers to falsely claim that Trump suggested gun supporters murder Clinton.

“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” Trump said to boos.  “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.” 

“Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” he added.

Here’s video, courtesy of ABC News:

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Granted, it wasn’t the best way to make his point, but Trump was naturally talking about gun supporters voting against Clinton.  Unfortunately, that’s not the way it was covered.

“Donald Trump appears to encourage gun rights advocates to shoot Hillary Clinton,” screamed the New York Daily News.

Rolling Stone also falsely accused Trump of hinting at a Clinton assassination.

“While the remark was characteristically glib, it finds Trump again encouraging violence at his rallies. Worse, it marks a harrowing jump from threatening protestors to suggesting either an armed revolt or the assassination of a president,” wrote Jon Blistein.

No, Jon, that’s not what Trump did.

The NRA issued a tweet noting that Trump was right — if Clinton wins, there’s nothing anyone can do.

The New York Times — which earlier justified open bias to help Hillary Clinton — reported:

Oblique as it was, Mr. Trump’s remark quickly elicited a wave of condemnation from Democrats, gun control advocates and others, who accused him of suggesting violence against Mrs. Clinton or liberal jurists. Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called Mr. Trump’s words “distasteful, disturbing, dangerous.”

Mrs. Clinton’s running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, expressed disbelief. “Nobody who is seeking a leadership position, especially the presidency, the leadership of the country, should do anything to countenance violence, and that’s what he was saying,” Mr. Kaine said in Austin, Tex. He called Mr. Trump’s remark “a window into the soul of a person who is just temperamentally not suited to the task.”

And Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, said Mr. Trump’s statement was “repulsive — literally using the Second Amendment as cover to encourage people to kill someone with whom they disagree.”

Newsbusters said the so-called “big three” dedicated over four times the coverage to Trump’s comment than it did to the presence of Seddique Mateen at a Clinton rally.

“Combined ABC, CBS, and NBC, dedicated 7 minutes, 31 seconds to Trump’s comment, while at the same time giving Mateen’s appearance at the Clinton rally a mere 1 minute, 36 seconds,” Nicholas Fondacaro wrote.

Naturally, they, too, promoted the idea that Trump was issuing an assassination threat.

Fondacaro added:

On ABC’s World News Tonight, reporter Tom Llamas featured a tweet from Senator Chris Murphy condemning Trump, saying, “”Don’t treat this as a political misstep. It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy and crisis.”” And during their Mateen segment they played a clip of Mateen talking with their local affiliate, where he said, “It’s the Democratic Party, so everybody can join.”

NBC Nightly News gave absolutely zero time to the Matten story, they instead chose to focus all of their political coverage on Trump. “But we want to start at home with Donald Trump and a potential new controversy simmering tonight after a remark that at best was a joke and at worst was an implied threat of violence,” said anchor Lester Holt leading off the night.

The Trump campaign responded:

Was Trump’s comment poorly worded?  Yes.  Was it an assassination threat?  No.

But that’s not the way it’s going to be played by the complex, and it will no doubt be used every day between now and the November election.

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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