There’s a lot you can say about Donald Trump, and a lot has already been said. Whether it’s his proposed policies, his comments about minorities, or telling the media that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons to defend themselves. And if you’ve been following the elections then you already know it gets a lot worse than that.
Throughout Trumps presidential bid his supporters; staff and his self have been accustomed to inciting violence and then condoning it. From supporters willingly throwing punches at protesters to Trump security assaulting journalists and photographers on more than one occasion. It’s truly unfortunate that the Republican nominee can act the way he does and somehow clinch the nomination as of last Tuesday, May 3, after his win in Indiana. How could we as Americans let something like this happen? And what does it say about our future?
Trumps entire campaign persona has been enlarged with the use of his rhetoric, and from the constant rhetoric that he and his supporters are bellowing, it’s not hard to see why so many of his rallies are met with an incidence of violence.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” said Trump in January at a rally in Iowa.
On March 10 in Florida, the Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski assaulted news reporter Michelle Fields for Breitbart, which is a Trump friendly publication. She was reportedly grabbed by the arm and jerked back by Lewandowski, causing bruises. Once he got word that this happened he tried to claim that Fields was simply making it up, until surveillance footage surfaced. In the video, one can clearly see Fields being yanked back by Lewandowski. Trump then decides to discredit the footage, saying that Fields is exaggerating and that she shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Lewandowski incited the violence and Trump condoned it. What else really has to be said?
“Donald Trump’s campaign violence is condoned all the way to the top,” said Lucia Graves of The Guardian newspaper.
In her article regarding the Lewandowski and Fields incident, she went to the point of view of Ben Terris from the Washington post who witnessed the assault on Fields first hand.
“Terris in his story vividly describes the finger-shaped bruises he saw forming on Fields’ forearm, and that she tweeted out a photo of her injury, hasn’t stopped the Trump campaign from denying the incident ever occurred,” said Graves. “The story is the most important one yet, because it distills Trump’s culture of violence and subsequent denial.”
A line is crossed once an individual decides to deny the reality of a dangerous situation that they themselves or their organization caused, there is a certain uneasiness that comes along with something like that.
When it comes to Trump, there is no filter, there never was a filter, nor will there ever be one. I believe that somebody running for a position needs to be a certain standard that is upheld. And from all that’s happened and all I’ve seen, I don’t think he can uphold those standards by any means. Having somebody who promotes violence against a fellow human being should not have any opportunity to be the leader of the free world. After all that’s what America is right? The free world?
Trump treats the protesters at his rallies like they’re the scum of the earth, or really anybody that disagrees. To me that sounds like the ground work of a possible violent individual in office. If we’ve learned anything from dangerous leaders in the past and present, most of the things that Trump is doing should raise that red flag. If he is elected, will he slowly transition into a more traditional presidential mindset and demeanor or will he continue to insult people and use his currently explosive rhetoric throughout his term? There’s really no way of knowing what he will do and I think that is very alarming.
“I love the old days,” said Trump. “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
Washington Post reporter Philip Bump wrote an article on him, chronologically detailing most if not all of the incidents that had occurred by the time the article was published in mid-March.
“There’s a sense that Trump is creating an on-going environment in which he encourages violence,” said Bump. “But that’s not necessarily the experience of people at the rallies. They are unlikely to know all of the times that Trump has disparaged protesters or embraced the idea of attacking them.”
As the race for the presidency continues, Clinton leading the Democratic vote with Sanders not too far behind and Trump who just recently won the GOP nomination by around 330 delegates to Ted Cruz and John Kasich who ended up dropping out just this past week. Trump previously said that if he didn’t win the nomination by getting to the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed and fell short by even 100, that there may or may not be riots. Of course, he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, so he said.
“Now, if you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen,” said Trump.
The Trump campaign has instilled a certain fear and uncertainty inside the minds of many Americans that hasn’t been witnessed in a long time in this country. If you take one thing from this story, its most singular point, is the observation of the how the Trump campaign operates and the reality that has been presented to us as Americans. We need to move forward, not backwards.
