Hillary Clinton has accused her Republican rival Donald Trump of inciting violence against her, which in some quarters was seen as an “assassination threat”.
“Words matter, my friends,” Clinton said, addressing supporters at a rally in Iowa on Wednesday . “And if you are running to be president or you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences.
“Yesterday, we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that crossed the line,” she said, citing “his casual inciting of violence”.
Addressing a rally in Florida on Tuesday, Trump told supporters that if elected president, Clinton will nominate liberal judges to the Supreme Court. And, there is “nothing you can do, folks”.
“Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” he said, referring to gun activists and supporters of a constitutional provision that guarantees the right to bear arms.
Clinton’s supporters called it an incitement to violence, and one Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, said it was “an assassination threat”.
Trump has denied it was a call to violence.
“Media desperate to distract from Clinton's anti-2A stance,” Trump said in a Tweet. “I said pro-2A citizens must organize and get out vote to save our Constitution!”
The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which spearheads the gun lobby and which has endorsed Trump, came to the help of the nominee. It said in a tweet Trump was right that if Clinton “gets to pick her anti-#2A #SCOTUS judges, there’s nothing we can do”.
{{/usCountry}}The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which spearheads the gun lobby and which has endorsed Trump, came to the help of the nominee. It said in a tweet Trump was right that if Clinton “gets to pick her anti-#2A #SCOTUS judges, there’s nothing we can do”.
{{/usCountry}}Taking the same line as Trump, it added in another Tweet, “But there IS something we will do on #ElectionDay: Show up and vote for the #2A! #DefendtheSecond #NeverHillary.”