Once again I am astounded by the irresponsible pro-Clinton media response to a statement made by Donald Trump, this time it being a statement in his recent speech in North Carolina. I fear that we are now observing the emergence of a pattern that will continue until the general election in November. As soon as one fabricated issue cools down–such as defaming a Gold Star family–, the media will pounce upon a new statement that it spins negatively in order to distract the American public from the real issues being addressed by Trump. After reading in the corporate media about the “Second Amendment Fiasco”, which purportedly involved “the assassination threat against Hillary Clinton”, I listened to Trump’s entire speech that was devoted among other things to economic concerns such as NAFTA and the TPP, the loss of jobs in the US, the decrease in wages and so forth. Of course, none of this has received media attention because the corporately owned pro-Clinton media is terrified by Trump’s “America First” commitment. Corporate structures today are international and multinational, and in their present form, they can only function according to the principle “Corporations First”, “American Second”.
The most rational response to Trump’s speech that I have read to date was published in “Politifact” under the title “In context: Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment People’ comment”. The online source quoted Trump’s statement and concluded that “Trump’s rather elliptical words certainly left room for interpretation”. So what was it that Trump actually said? In this hour-long speech, he made these comments near the end:
“So here, I just wrote this down today. Hillary wants to raise taxes — it’s a comparison. I want to lower them. Hillary wants to expand regulations, which she does bigly. Can you believe that? I will reduce them very, very substantially, could be as much as 70 to 75 percent. Hillary wants to shut down energy production. I want to expand it. Lower electric bills, folks! Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick –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 I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day, if — if — Hillary gets to put her judges in.”
Based on this statement alone, Senator Chris Murphy asserted unequivocally on CNN: “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy and crisis”.
One of the difficulties in understanding Trump’s intention lies in his conversational style. He speaks often in incomplete sentences, backtracking and correcting himself, and he quickly alters direction in his speech, leaving one topic and addressing another. Surprisingly, he sometimes utters a well-formulated, grammatically correct sentence that leads one to wonder if his command of the language is better than his populist style would indicate. In any case, his style does present interpretive problems. It is, however, the duty of the media to deal with these problems in a fair and rational matter. The crucial–albeit very brief–statement in the speech that has ignited still another controversy is this: “By the way, and if she gets to pick — if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” The second sentence was immediately interpreted by the media as a veiled assassination threat against Hillary Clinton, if not also against potential Supreme Court Justices that she might nominate. Given Trump’s cryptic style, the interpretation of the pro-Clinton media certainly requires some verification.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump might have intended the statement as a veiled threat. Even if we grant that the statement was possibly a veiled threat, there is a gap between possibly and actually that any responsible interpreter must bridge. The claim that the statement was an actual threat would gain credibility, for instance, if it could be demonstrated that Trump has a pattern of making veiled threats in this way. Is the statement under consideration Trump’s characteristic way of threatening people’s lives? So far, I have heard no one make this case. Alternatively, the claim against Trump would be stronger if he had actually made a clear, unambiguous threat against Hillary’s life in the past. Then there would be some basis for interpreting his cryptic statement in North Carolina as an actual assassination threat. Of course, the media is not interested in thinking through any of this because its only concern is to discredit Trump, not to establish facts for political debate.
So how do we give Trump’s statement a fair rendering? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we are obligated to take his words at face value. If Hillary Clinton is elected President and if she is able to place liberal judges on the Supreme Court who want to abolish the Second Amendment, then the supporters of the Second Amendment may be able to oppose the proposed change. Now, one might fault Trump for not being more circumspect in his criticisms of Hillary, but the charge that he inciting violence or threatening her life is patently absurd. Consider the response of Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor for Democratic Coalition against Trump: “There is no place in American politics for this kind of disgusting rhetoric. Donald Trump should immediately drop out of the race, and he should be arrested for committing a federal crime. He’s proven himself to be nothing more than a thug, and anyone supporting him after this grotesque display should be publicly shamed.”
Having spent most of my career reading and interpreting historical and contemporary documents, I can say without hesitation that I find Dworkin’s comments far more disgusting and grotesque than those of Donald Trump. The media is, in my opinion, deeply worried about Trump’s policy statements, and in its attempt to elect a corporately funded, Wall Street friendly President, it has abandoned all pretense of fairness in reporting. For her part, Hillary is quite willing to exploit her privilege as former First Lady by insisting that the FBI investigate–at the taxpayers’ expense–the fabricated assassination threat. What better way to counterbalance her problems with the FBI! Since both the media and Hillary have been bought by the same groups, we can expect the media to dutifully play this issue to the hilt.
Jack Brush is a Villager and frequent contributor to Villages-News.com. In his new book In Search of the Common Good: Guideposts for Concerned Citizens, he develops guidelines for balancing human rights with the urgent need to promote the common good in our society. For more information, see www.jackebrush.com.