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#EndorseThis: Trump Surrogates Explain Away ‘Second Amendment’ Comment

#EndorseThis: Trump Surrogates Explain Away ‘Second Amendment’ Comment

Donald Trump’s thinly-veiled threat on Hillary Clinton’s life yesterday was yet another in his increasingly desperate attempts to bait his supporters against the “dishonest media.” Trump’s suggestion that supporters of the Second Amendment “can do” something about Hillary Clinton appointing pro-gun control justices to the Supreme Court was just vague enough for the Trump campaign to immediately insist that he was talking about gun advocates’ “political power.”

But the message was clear: This woman wants to take away your guns. Do something about it.

The threat left many of his campaign’s highest-profile surrogates in an awkward position: How can one defend the indefensible?

Luckily, that’s about the only one of the media’s questions the Trump campaign has succeeded in answering this election cycle — over and over again — and Trump’s supporters are well-versed in the art of the word-twist. Here are some highlights.

Rudy Giuliani said that if Trump wanted someone killed, he would just openly call for it.

Katrina Pierson, Trump’s national spokeswoman, started by referring Jake Tapper to the Trump campaign’s clarification of his remarks. She then tried to say that what Trump “said” isn’t really what he said. Or something like that.

But a day later, on MSBNC, she said the story had only picked up weight because of the “liberal media.”

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager who is now being paid a severance package from the campaign while commenting on the election as a paid CNN contributor, claimed he didn’t “know what he meant” by the remarks (though he also said Trump “understands what he’s saying”), contradicting Trump himself, who said in response to criticism that “there can be no other interpretation” of what he meant, other than that it was a reference to “political power.”

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who supports Trump, called the remark “imprudent” but then called out media and commentators who interpreted it as violence for supposedly imagining their own version of what Trump said. It’s the “he who smelt it dealt it” of political commentary.

Of course, all it takes is one real person outside the Trump surrogate bubble to explain what Trump actually wanted his supporters to hear. Take one CSPAN caller, who reported that Trump wanted him to “defend our rights with… guns.”

Photo and video: CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN.

Trump Says ‘Second Amendment People’ ‘Can Do’ Something About Hillary Clinton

Trump Says ‘Second Amendment People’ ‘Can Do’ Something About Hillary Clinton

WILMINGTON, N.C. (Reuters) – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that gun rights activists could act to stop his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from nominating liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices, igniting yet another firestorm of criticism just as he sought to steer clear of controversy.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump said at a rally. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” he continued. The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees a right to bear firearms.

Until Trump made the remark, he had been trying to rally Republican voters behind him and against Clinton, who is leading in national opinion polls in the race for the Nov. 8 election. Some in the audience who were seated behind Trump could be seen wincing when he made the comment.

Clinton’s campaign called the remark “dangerous.”

“A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way,” it said.

When asked to clarify what Trump meant, his campaign said Trump was referring to getting supporters of the Second Amendment to rally votes for Trump in the election.

“It’s called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power,” the Trump campaign statement said.

Introducing Trump at a later rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused the news media of taking the remark out of context to help Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, get elected.

“What he meant by that (remark) was you have the power to vote against her,” he said to cheers. “You have the power to speak against her. You know why? Because you’re Americans.”

“It proves that most of the press is in the tank for Hillary Clinton,” he added. “They are doing everything they can to destroy Donald Trump.”

The U.S. Secret Service, which provides security details for both Trump and Clinton and rarely comments on political matters, said when asked for a response to Trump: “The Secret Service is aware of the comment.”

By day’s end, Trump was drawing criticism on several fronts, another chapter in a campaign marked by bitterness and partisanship.

Michael Hayden, a former CIA director who on Monday was among 50 Republican national security experts to denounce Trump in a letter, said on CNN, “You’re not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear.”

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a liberal firebrand who loves tweaking Trump, tweeted that Trump “makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.”

Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway fought back in a tweet of her own, calling Warren a “disgrace.”

GUN RIGHTS AN ISSUE

Gun rights have been a potent issue in a 2016 campaign being waged amid violence that has convulsed many American cities.

Trump has planted himself firmly on the side of gun owners with a “law and order” campaign. Before his remark about Clinton, he had said Islamic State militants who killed 130 people in France last year could have been stopped if some of the victims had been armed.

The Clinton campaign has challenged Trump when in the past he has accused her of planning to abolish the Second Amendment if elected president. A senior Clinton policy adviser said in May that she favors taking steps at the federal level to keep guns out of the hands of criminals while protecting the Second Amendment.

Tuesday’s speech came on the heels of a discordant week on the campaign trail for Trump, a businessman seeking his first public office. He came under fire from within his party for belatedly endorsing fellow Republicans in re-election races and a prolonged clash with the parents of fallen Muslim American Army captain Humayun Khan.

On Monday, Trump had seemed to be heeding Republican advice to stick to a message of criticizing Clinton and other Democrats while putting forward economic policy proposals in a speech in Detroit.

Trump’s vice presidential running mate Mike Pence, asked if he believed Trump was inciting violence toward Clinton, told NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate: “Of course not. No.”

But Democrats called Trump’s remarks another sign of a candidate unfit for the White House.

“Don’t treat this as a political misstep. It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said in a tweet.

Immediately after Trump made his comment, many on social media accused him of effectively calling for Clinton’s assassination. In just three hours, 2nd amendment became the top trending topic on Twitter, with more than 60,000 posts mentioning the term.

Overall sentiment on the posts was more negative than positive, at a ratio of 2.5 to 1, according to the social media analytics firm Zoomph. #ProtectHillary was also one of the top trending hashtags on Twitter.

The 50 prominent national security officials said in their letter on Monday that Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history.”

“He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary,” their statement said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Alana Wise in Washington and Angela Moon in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

Ukraine Threatens To Scrap Ceasefire

Ukraine Threatens To Scrap Ceasefire

dpa

KIEV — Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko warned Tuesday that he would consider scrapping the conditions of a September truce with pro-Russian separatists, in the wake of what he referred to as “illegal” elections in the country’s east.

The disputed vote was held on Sunday in the Donbass region that includes Donetsk and Luhansk. For months the area has been beset by violent conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces.

Russia backed the outcome of the vote, which overwhelmingly supported the separatists, while the United States, the European Union, and Ukraine rejected it.

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out on any moves to end international sanctions against Russia amid the continuing tensions.

“There is currently no reason to repeal them,” Merkel told a meeting of the Federation of German Employers (BDA) in Berlin, and called on Moscow to use its influence over the separatists to implement the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk in September.

The ceasefire protocol signed by the government and militants established special conditions for the region, including stipulating that local elections would have to be held under Ukrainian law.

After being ratified by Ukraine’s Parliament in late September, the ceasefire law grants partial autonomy and amnesty for the region for three years. It also grants the right to maintain armed units to those districts held by separatists.

Separatist leader Denis Pushilin dismissed Poroshenko’s threats, warning the government in Kiev against jeopardizing the peace process.

The pro-Western leadership has “stalled for time, leaving the people of Donbass in the dark for too long,” Pushilin said on Russian television channel Rossiya 24 in reference to the area affected by the armed rebellion.
He added that repealing the law was no great threat, characterizing it as ineffective.

Sunday’s election winners were due to take power on Tuesday. The separatists declared their independence from Ukraine in the spring, with their leaders saying they were in favour of joining Russia at a later stage.

Since then, more than 3,600 people have been killed in the conflict, which emerged following the removal of Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in a popular uprising in February.

Meanwhile, a rebel commander stated that pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine were in possession of anti-aircraft missiles as a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet was shot down in July.

The admission by Commander Alexander Khodakovski in an interview published Tuesday in the Dutch daily De Volkskrant contradicts prior statements by the rebels on the matter.

Khodakovski however denied that rebels fired at the jet MH17, which had 298 people on board.

“A Buk-system was travelling from Luhansk to the area, but was not yet in place,” Khodakovski said referring to a Russian-built system of surface-to-air missiles.

The cause of MH17’s July 17 demise has still not been clarified.

AFP News/Alexander Khudoteply

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U.S., Canada Air Defenses On Alert After Ottawa Shooting

U.S., Canada Air Defenses On Alert After Ottawa Shooting

Washington — U.S. and Canadian air defenses were put on heightened alert Wednesday following a shooting in Canada’s parliament, and the American embassy in Ottawa was placed on lockdown, officials said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) “is taking appropriate and prudent steps to ensure we are adequately postured to respond quickly to any incidents involving aviation in Canada,” said a U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move came as a precaution after a gunman suspected of killing a Canadian soldier guarding a war memorial in Ottawa stormed the Canadian parliament, before being shot dead by police.

NORAD spokesman Captain Jeff Davis declined to provide details but said steps had been taken to ensure defenses were “adequately postured.”

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf confirmed the U.S. embassy in the Canadian capital was on lockdown, and staff movements had been restricted.

Just outside the U.S. capital at Arlington National Cemetery, military commanders “authorized additional security to be implemented at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” as a precautionary measure.

President Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, while Secretary of State John Kerry was also briefed as he flew home from a visit to Germany.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” Harf said, adding all U.S. embassy staff had been accounted for.

While the shooting incident in Ottawa raised fears of a potential link to extremists, NORAD’s Davis said there were no signs of possible hijackings or imminent threats to aviation.

“We’re not aware of any current, specific threats against the aviation system,” he told AFP.

U.S. intelligence officials were not immediately available to comment as to whether there were any suspected links to extremists in the shooting in Canada.

NORAD, founded during the Cold War, is a combined U.S. and Canadian military command designed to safeguard the air space over the two countries, with its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the command regularly scrambles fighter jets to intercept private aircraft that enter prohibited areas over the U.S. capital or elsewhere, escorting them to the nearest runway.

AFP Photo/Peter McCabe