Donald Trump said Monday night that he longed for the old days when his team, or even Trump himself, would have been able to punch violent protesters.
“There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches,” Trump said during his Las Vegas rally Monday night after a disruptive man was removed. “We’re not allowed to punch back anymore.”
“I love the old days. 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,” Trump said, adding, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
According to CNN, the Republican presidential hopeful also called the protester “nasty as hell” and accused him of trying to punch the security officers removing him from the rally, though it did not appear that way from the video.
Also during the rally, the GOP frontrunner called his rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz “sick.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has used harsh rhetoric against protesters at his rallies.
At a November rally in Alabama, a physical altercation broke out between a black protester and white attendees causing Trump to suggest afterward that the Black Lives Matter protester “should have been roughed up.”
At another rally in January in Vermont, Trump urged security to take protesters’ coats and “throw them out in the cold.” Another protester in the same month, a Muslim woman, was ejected from a South Carolina rally when she stood up in silent protest.
Trump’s latest comments come on the eve of Tuesday’s Nevada caucuses.
